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Different levels of Spanish in Colombia
#1

Different levels of Spanish in Colombia

In my opinion language is king.

A lot of of times in my life where i was needing advanced literature on various topics my English helped me tremendously or simply when i wanted to solicit anyone to do something in my native language i had the oral abilities to do so.

I first started being interested in Colombia after my trip to South America. I came back to Israel, having missed Colombia because of lack of knowledge, only to realize that i missed one of the best countries the continent has to offer. I already had a positive experience with an American woman that was working for a 6 months internship in Israel. We met through a mutual friend and instantly hit it off pretty well. When i asked her after being 3 months with her what was the most attractive thing about me, she said that i talk in a very refreshing, cute funny way that you never hear in America. Since then i had set a goal of learning the Spanish language in order to be ready for a trip to Colombia. I figured that my conversational abilities would be my edge compared to other gringos and the like.

I feel now after 1 year of learning Spanish that i am much more mature and sober about my short term language abilities and goals.

I was lucky to have started with what considered by many one of the best Spanish programs out there. Before i was acquainted with the program, i read through a lot of threads in a forum called: Howtolearnanylanguage.com
I was so impressed with the in depth discussions of how to approach Spanish that i continued to read and investigate what program would work best for me.

I decided to try FSI Programatic which is a program made in the 60's by the Foreign Service Institute (hence the abbreviation FSI) in order to send ambassadors to South America in a rather hurry. the program was published in 1967 and remember this is 5 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. So a lot of emphasis was put on making sure the participants of the program would be able to learn the Spanish language in an intense immersion environment for 6 months 10 hours a day.

Living and learning the local language for 2-4 years in any part of the world is still to my belief the best bet of really becoming fluent in your desired language. Maybe one day i would do this also and live in Spanish speaking country but for now i had needed to play my cards the best way i was dealt them. And so when i first started working with FSI i soon realized that this is the closest i'm gonna get anytime soon to full immersion environment.

Since then I added weekly sessions of a local tv show in Colombia que se llama El Séptimo día and Skype calls with native South Americans speakers.

So again as i was mentioning in the beginning, after all the hours i had spent with my Spanish endeavor i have come to a position where i can say: Fluency is relative.

Let's say that the different levels of Spanish or any other language for that matter are scaled as follows:

0-A1 (Passive Knowledge) -A2-B1 (Basic Fluency) -B2-C1 (Advanced Fluency) -C2-Native

A gringo that has never touched any kind of Spanish is in the level of 0, where comparably I am somewhere in the A2 upper area with glimpses of B1 when i feel energized.

From my online experience thus far i feel very good about my Spanish. I have been able to use dichos (sayings) and local colombian slang that caught them by surprise [Image: smile.gif]
I even made a girl cry out of happiness and emotion solely with my Spanish.

I feel the time has come to book a flight. I am going to book in advance my ticket which will commit myself to 7-8 more months of learning before i fly off.

Since i have not been to Colombia i really don't know how will my Spanish be received in a face to face conversation. I will be happy if it will be a success, but i wont be disappointed anyhow because i am interested to see in real life the subject of my study.

I am interested to hear your share of things when it comes to Spanish in Colombia.
How did Spanish help you?
What anecdotes do you have with learning Spanish and using it in a native environment?

Feel free to share anything
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#2

Different levels of Spanish in Colombia

Dude I can already tell that you will be fine!

It appears you are putting alot of refined effort into learning spanish.

I am also studying Spanish right now as im planning on moving to Colombia as soon as I finish my teaching in Korea.

I will have to check out that forum and program you are using.

I would prob break up the levels like this

Lvl 0 - Clueless, only knows maybe 3 words

Lvl 1 - Knows the very basic main words, able to get by with the "tourist" words and phrases

Lvl 2 - Knows a decent amount of words and conjugations and how to form coherent sentences. Converse on a VERY basic level. Pretty much its the where are you from. How old are you. What do you like. How many brothers and sisters do you have. Do you work or study ect.

Lvl 3 - Semi conversational. Can communicate and understand a fair amount stuff beyond the basic shit. Still get confused and lost sometimes when chatting.

Lvl 4 - Fluent. Able to carry on complete conversations and understand and get across almost any thought.

**Some people will have one higher level, but for me fluent is when you can carry on and communicate almost any thought with someone. Being 100% correct everytime isnt really important as far as im concerned**

Right now im close to a lvl 3.
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#3

Different levels of Spanish in Colombia

Quote: (10-13-2011 11:42 AM)Dash Global Wrote:  

Dude I can already tell that you will be fine!

It appears you are putting alot of refined effort into learning spanish.

I am also studying Spanish right now as im planning on moving to Colombia as soon as I finish my teaching in Korea.

I will have to check out that forum and program you are using.

I would prob break up the levels like this

Lvl 0 - Clueless, only knows maybe 3 words

Lvl 1 - Knows the very basic main words, able to get by with the "tourist" words and phrases

Lvl 2 - Knows a decent amount of words and conjugations and how to form coherent sentences. Converse on a VERY basic level. Pretty much its the where are you from. How old are you. What do you like. How many brothers and sisters do you have. Do you work or study ect.

Lvl 3 - Semi conversational. Can communicate and understand a fair amount stuff beyond the basic shit. Still get confused and lost sometimes when chatting.

Lvl 4 - Fluent. Able to carry on complete conversations and understand and get across almost any thought.

**Some people will have one higher level, but for me fluent is when you can carry on and communicate almost any thought with someone. Being 100% correct everytime isnt really important as far as im concerned**

Right now im close to a lvl 3.

I agree about what you're saying with carrying on your thoughts. No doubt it will go a long way. However reaching lvl 3 at your scale would open you instantly to a large percent of women that you wouldn't have talked to otherwise.

Let's take for example lvl 1 and lvl 2. The kind of girls that would carry on meeting and dates with you is still going to be the ones that talk a fair amount of English or are just generally into foreigners.

Random regular girls would still be bored after some time because of the lack of ability to convey deep feelings and thoughts.
Ask yourself the same question. If an average tourist girl meets you at your country and doesn't really talk English. She talks slow, makes numerous mistakes, gets stuck in the middle of the sentence. Let's face it, you are gonna get bored and just leave after a while.

Again depends on the situation but most of the times these girls will see it as a waste of their time.

I'm excited for you that you are somewhere between 2 and 3. This is great news. Reaching lvl 3 in my opinion would just exponentially enhance your experience.
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#4

Different levels of Spanish in Colombia

Def, you need to be a lvl 3 on my scale to properly game and conversate with women.

Lvl 2 will be hard, although I got a same night lay from it in San Jose. With the help of the girls friend saying the money words "Do you wanna go back to our apartment?"

Pretty much you will be limited to only trying to fuck DRUNK girls from at bars and clubs. You can forget anything else.

Im excited as hell about rolling to Colombia being able to properly communicate the the locals.

They will be impressed imo.
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#5

Different levels of Spanish in Colombia

In addition to conversation abilities, you also need to take into account your accent. I was talking to this Colombian girl and she made fun of my accent, which is a mix of Gringo, Mexican and Colombian. So I responded back by turning on the gringo accent really thick. She told me never to do that again because she couldn't understand a single word I said.

Sometimes when I'm talking to a taxi driver I'll ask if they meet a lot of gringos. If they say yes then I'll ask them "IF THEY TALK LIKE THIS?!" which is always good for a laugh because thats how a lot of gringos talk. I'm talking about loud mouthed Americans who don't put any effort into their pronunciation, sentence flow, or tone, so they speak Spanish the same way they would speak English.
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