Spanish

This summer I have the opportunity to go to Honduras and work with a medical group in the province of Santa Barbara. After two semesters in Malaga I feel more confident with my Spanish abilities, but at the same time still wonder if it will hold up in other countries. I have had multiple conversations in Spain about the subject of the Spanish language. I have talked with people here that tell me that the best Spanish is spoken in Bolivia and Colombia. At the same time there are people that tell me that the only correct Spanish is from Spain. In Spain I still have a lot of difficulty understanding people on the street or in Spanish films. Obviously I have made great leaps and bounds in my language comprehension since I arrived here, but I’m still not a fluent speaker.

Recently I saw a documentary about the drug war on the boarder between the United States and Mexico. Although it was done in English, there were many parts where they used subtitles. I was able to understand about 95 percent of what was being said. These small triumphs really help a person learning a language want to continue. I hope that wherever I end up using my Spanish it will be understandable and coherent. Although we might not be as fluent as we want the year or semester that we stayed in Malaga built a foundation in our comprehension of the Spanish language that we can only keep adding too as time goes on.