How much Spanish should I learn before holiday

[caramac04]

I’m planning a trip to Spain, alone in a hotel, this year. I will be meeting up with my English speaking Spanish friend.
I think I would feel better if I could speak some Spanish but not sure how practical this is.
I’ve never been abroad so I’m a bit anxious. I haven’t booked yet. My friend has offered to host but I’d prefer to stay in a hotel.
Any advice please? It will be in Valencia. I will book through a travel agent.

Just download Duolingo and work your way through it. You'll learn some wacky phrases as well as the useful stuff.
Also you can book for yourself online easily, no need to use a travel agent if it's just flights and a hotel. Couldn't be simpler to organise.
Have a great time.

@TheBoysAndTheBallet thank you. I did start with Duolingo a while ago so I will definitely do that. I keep telling dgc who are learning Spanish at school to try Duolingo to support them but they prefer TikTok 🙈
Because it’s my first trip I just feel more confident using a travel agent.

You’ll probably be fine with hello/good bye/ please/thank-you a need Google translate in your phone. I find my most heavily used phrase is ‘the bill please’ when on holiday, I know that in 4 languages but little else! I spent 5 years learning French at school and can barely speak any in France!

I can ask where the toilet is in about 6 languages. Also learned left and right so I can understand a bit as well. Priorities.

you don't need to learn Spanish. I mean sure you can, if you want to, but you will manage perfectly fine without in Valencia as well.

I always learn to say please, thankyou, yes, no and 'can I have the bill please' when I go somewhere new. And once I'm there, I try and get to grips with signs for entry, exit, push/pull (for doors!), open/closed and some of the more common foods/dishes. That's served me fine.

Menus often have translations, but google translate will do it for you (depends how much detail you want - I'm often happy to go with recognising the main protein/flavour, and taking a punt from there, but I'm happy to experiment/be surprised).

Valencia has a lot of tourists, from all over the place, so many people will have some basic English. It's always appreciated if you exchange pleasantries in Spanish, and at least have a go at saying what you'd like from a menu in Spanish, but you will be just fine!

Ticket machines (for trains etc), will have language flags on the first screen, so you will be able to do all that in English.

You will get by without any Spanish but I've found that if you try to speak Spanish, no matter how badly, you will be treated far better by the local people, who will go out of their way to help you.

Previous posters have already given great feedback, but just wanted to add two things:

1. Duolingo used to have detailed explanations of grammar for its courses. They dumped it all when they radically redid the course format (which forced the users into doing vast numbers of repetitive exercises while making not much progress, which allowed Duolingo to force its users into watching more and more ads or pay for subscription to avoid them.)
   However, the grammar explanations have been saved and are on a site called Duome, so if doing Duolingo and you come across something you don't understand, it's always worth taking a look over there.

2. There is an app called Language transfer where you can learn Spanish. The app is really good:

It is audio only.
It is FREE.
It has no ads.
It does not waste your time on useless repetitive exercises (as Duolingo now tends to do).
Each segment is short and manageable.
If you follow along in the intended manner, you WILL find yourself actually able to produce sentences out loud (not necessarily the case with Duolingo).

I use both, because Duolingo has languages that Language transfer doesn't, but LT really is so much better in my opinion.

I think I would feel better if I could speak some Spanish but not sure how practical this is.

Honestly I wouldn't bother trying to learn a language for a holiday. It is quite an effort to learn any language to the point where, if you say something and the other person responds in that language, you will understand what they are saying. You could spend dozens of hours on it and maybe have one six-word conversation as a result.

This is particularly a problem with Spanish, where people speak very fast and have a lot of different accents. Imagine if you learned English by reading or listening to the speeches of Barack Obama and then you landed in Newcastle or Glasgow.

Also, even if you do learn to read some Spanish, when you get to Valencia you will notice that most of the spelling on the signs in the street seems weird. This is because the first official language is not Spanish but Valenciano, which is a dialect of Catalan. Everyone speaks Spanish as well, and some "immigrants" from Madrid don't speak Catalan fluently, but they are all used to reading it. Catalan is a cousin of Spanish, a bit like Dutch and German, but they are distinct languages.

I think sometimes that people, especially Brits, try not to be one of "those awful English-speaking tourist who goes abroad and expects everyone to speak English" — but actually, these days, almost everyone you meet in a tourist situation in major European destinations does speak English. For the waiter to speak English to you is as much a part of their service as de-boning the whole fish that they just brought to the table. In fact if you insist on trying to speak your 20 words of Spanish you may actually be making their life harder, because they have to try to understand, and then when they reply in Spanish they have to repeat it four times slowly.

I say this as someone who speaks multiple languages fluently, having lived outside the UK for many years. I also sometimes get the "Oh, try not to be that loud obnoxious English-speaking tourist" thing when I go to a place where I can't speak a word or even read the alphabet. But then I see the Dutch and French and Swedish tourists all speaking English to the Czech or Tunisian hotel staff and I realise that nobody is judging me for being "an arrogant/ignorant Brit/American", they're just trying to get their job done.

Probably the single thing most people can do to improve communication on their holiday is to think about how they speak English and try to make that clearer. For example, "Oi, two more o'those, yeah?" is a lot harder to understand than "Could we have two more beers, please". What annoys people is not lack of language skills, it's lack of politeness and respect.

Thank you everyone for your advice, I’m pondering but think I’ll look at Language Transfer. I’ll definitely speak English clearly. My parents went to Spain many times and didn’t speak Spanish but then again they rarely left the hotel and all the staff spoke English.
I am a bit anxious about travelling alone and a bit of Spanish language will make me feel better even if I don’t use it.
I’m retired so my life is only as busy as I make it really so I have got time.

Castillian Spanish (the official language) is very phonetic and easy to read. They don't have any silent letters like we do. Most people speak this and hear it on the news etc
Catalan Spanish has more crossover with French. I did Spanish and French A 'levels and I can get myself understood in Valencia.
I also found that Spanish people are more accepting of clumsy attempts to speak their language. The French seem incapable of understanding if you're not 100% correct.

I agree with others, learn the pleasantries plus a couple of useful questions and you'll be fine.

Last year I went to Greece and Spain and accidentally said Kallymera to a bemused maid at my hotel in Benalmadena! 😱🫣

This is because the first official language is not Spanish but Valenciano

This is incorrect. Spanish and Valencià / Valenciano are co-official languages, on an equal level. The de facto “first” language in the city is Spanish actually, it’s when you start leaving the city itself and go to the outskirts / towns, that Valenciano becomes the more commonly used one.

Catalan Spanish has more crossover with French

What on earth is Catalan Spanish - that does not exist. There is Spanish (Castilian Spanish is used to differentiate between the Spanish spoken on the peninsula and the Spanish spoken in Latin and South America). Then there is Catalan - spoken in Catalunya and the Balearics, and Valencian - spoken in the Valencian Community (so Castellón, Valencia and Alicante provinces). Catalan and Valencian are basically the same language with some pronunciation differences and a few grammar ones - so like a PP said, they’re a bit like dialects to each other.

Catalan is a Romance language so of course it has similarities to French, Italian etc - just how Portuguese or Galician or Romanian also do (the latest on a lesser level obviously). It is however extremely incorrect to refer to the language as it being a “type of Spanish”. You wouldn’t call the language spoken in Wales “Welsh English”, would you?

OP, like others have said, using a few short words and phrases in Spanish will be much appreciated by the locals. It doesn’t mean you have to get to a level where you can hold a basic conversation, but even say good morning, please, thank you and how are you, will be a nice addition to your interactions with them. Don’t be discouraged or offended if they immediately switch to English though - people can be direct and keen to move on quickly in a language you’ll both understand better, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t appreciated your efforts. Have a wonderful time visiting your friend!

I always feel the important words to learn are please, thank you, food, drink, help, love, and toilet. You can use tone of voice and gestures to get by then 😁

Although I’m still amused at the “most people speak this” - everybody you will encounter in Spain speaks this, unless you are going to an extremely rural area where the 80/90+ year old population only spoke Valencian / Catalan / Basque / Galician at home, and had the privilege of attending school before the Franco dictatorship (beginning in 1939), during which all native languages other than Spanish were banned.

Castilian Spanish is not the only official language in Spain - there are 5 in total (4 if you count Catalan and Valencian in together). The history and richness of the linguistic and cultural identities in Spain are fascinating, but please be reassured everybody you will meet during your trip there will speak perfect Spanish.

Civil workers have the right to use whatever official language they please in their interactions with the public, but I doubt your trip will involve spending a few hours at the registry office where the lady at the counter prefers to only use Valencian when speaking to you.

the Franco dictatorship (beginning in 1939), during which all native languages other than Spanish were banned

Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. Languages other than Spanish were removed from the public sphere, but it wasn't illegal to speak them. Books were published in Catalan starting in the 1950s (e.g., Josep Pla's "El quadern gris", 1966), and Spanish national TV started broadcasting in Catalan in 1964: https://www.rtve.es/rtve/20241026/rtve-cataluna-celebra-60-anos-catalan/16304693.shtml

However, I do like the story that when Johan Cruyff was playing for Barcelona and his son was born in 1974, he named him Jordi as a big up-yours to Franco, because he was registering the birth outside Spain and so could do so, whereas a Spanish person would have had to settle for Jorge.

I say go for it. It can only enhance your trip. Even knowing simple words like “Servicios?” when you need the loo in a cafe is so much better than going up to someone and asking in English. Im currently having online Italian lessons because I am travelling solo to Sicily in April. I think a few in person classes might be useful. My local library often has flyers for language classes- worth checking. Also, if you have Netflix, watching a Spanish program with the subtitles on can be good, there are some great Spanish thrillers on there at the moment.