Make 2018 Your Year

It's that time of year again. We promise ourselves we won't gain any Christmas weight, or get into a family argument over who really finished the bread sauce, and we certainly will not start eating ANY Christmas day treats until at least 24th December. (Erm, yes. Of course we won't. How could you accuse us of such a thing?) Ah, the chaos that is December.

While some promises are just too hard to keep, there are endless life goals we are desperate to achieve, yet continue to put off. Sometimes nothing stands in the way but pure procrastination. And we're entitled to such vacillation, when there's an ENDLESS flow of laundry shooting through the basket, piled up rubbish bins, recycling, office emails literally spilling out of our laptops and to top it all off, a Christmas dinner to plan. (Insert overwhelmed emoji here.)

Like most things in adulthood, there's never really a convenient time to pick up a new language. It's certainly not going to be easy. But it can be fun, exhilarating and oftentimes, life changing. Even our professional lives can be greatly impacted by the acquisition of a foreign language, particularly when we learn one or more of the official dialects in an important trading area.

Spain remains a vital point of contact for UK business, as well as the most popular holiday destination for Brits and retired British expats. Given this has been the case for decades, there is no excuse for relying on English and English alone. Of course, our Spanish neighbours work hard to achieve a more than decent level of our native tongue, for which we should remain thankful. This has aided negotiation and all round communication for years. But now is the time to meet in the middle.

Of the many spoken on our planet, Spanish ranks as one of the least challenging languages to learn, particularly for speakers of Indo-European vernaculars like English. Its wonderfully open vowel sounds (a total of just five) and Latin rooted vocabulary mean Spanish lessons are a much easier ride than say taking up Japanese, Quechua or Gaelic. It also holds the secrets to some of the most popular, beautiful, dulcet and in many cases even downloaded music, written and produced both historically and today. Spanish is the language of the telenovela. It's the poetry of Pablo Neruda, the history of La Alhambra and the cultures of 400 million people in 21 countries, all rolled into one. 

Learning castellano will leave a permanent mark on your comprehension of the world and its many communities. As a past-time, it is so enriching, educational, exciting and packed full of endless eccentricities that it truly is the best kind of hobby.

In other words, if you're torn between the most widely spoken romance language or taking up crochet, you know what we're going to recommend. 

Make 2018 the year you begin a new chapter. Aprende español