Weddingbee Blog

Our honeymoon to Costa Rica isn’t for a little while, so I’m using the time between now and then to get well and truly obsessed prepared. We were accepted into the volunteer program with them knowing neither of us speaks Spanish, but I figured it would be a good idea to learn a bit of the language beforehand.

Being Canadian and us having two official languages up here, I can speak French. Not well, and I understand a lot more than I can speak, but I was taught French in school from kindergarten until grade 12. Reading the backs of cereal boxes, jam jars, and shampoo bottles doesn’t hurt either. But, French is not Spanish, although knowing French does help with some Spanish words.

My mum has a university degree in speaking Spanish and has spent some time in Spain, so I have a coach on the other end of the phone if I need it, too. But being the iPhone-obsessed person that I am, I looked for apps for that.

I downloaded two learn-Spanish apps recently: iStart Spanish! and Living Language - Spanish. The fun thing about iStart Spanish is that there are two Spanish speakers—one from Spain and one from Colombia. This sounded good to me, because I know the difference between trying to understand France-French and Quebecois-French and wasn’t sure if there would be a similar difference in the different areas of the Spanish-speaking world. So far I have discovered that Costa Rica (maybe all of Central America? I’m not sure) doesn’t have a lisp like the Spanish in Spain does.

I have also purchased Lonely Planet’s guide to Costa Rican Spanish. I think this little phrasebook will be handy to keep in my purse in Costa Rica and easier to look stuff up in than an app. I really think the apps will help us with learning vocab and especially pronunciation! The book will be great to have for when my brain dries up under pressure. (Like last night, when I couldn’t remember the French word for “cat” of all things. For the record, it is “chat”—only one letter different than the English word. I think my brain is disintegrating.)

The funny thing is that trying to learn Spanish is making the language centres of my brain churn, and most of the time my brain supplies me with the French phrase or word I’m looking for, but not the Spanish one I’m trying to learn. I realize that where we’ll be we won’t need to know Spanish, but I think it is only polite to try to learn!

Did you honeymoon somewhere people speak a different language? What do you do when you travel somewhere people don’t speak your native language? Do you hope you can get by without, or try to learn at least the basics?