Let me begin this next column in the series with a generalized statement:

The Spanish you learn in a classroom in the United States, Mexico, or in your own study from some impossibly expensive Spanish language tapes WILL NOT be the Spanish you hear in the streets of Mexico!

I do not care who will try to convince you otherwise! I do not care who may convince you that this method or that method will give you fluency if only you would dish out the bucks to take it. What you learn in a classroom will not be the Spanish you hear on the streets in Mexico.

You will not hear classroom Spanish in the stores, markets, doctors office, from street vendors, church, or any life event that happens outside the classroom. You will not! I know this for certain because I took a load of classes in the U.S., Mexico, and a lot of studying using one of the most expensive language learning home study courses. And what I learned was not anything close to what I hear in real life in the streets.

This is a dilemma. This, in fact, borders on the criminal, does it not? If what you will learn in class in the U.S., some immersion course in Mexico, or from some home study that promise you will speaking Spanish in 45 days, doesnt do the trick, then havent you wasted you money? In my view, you bet it does.

Let me make some more generalized statements.

You could take 4 semesters of Spanish at the local Junior College, then come to Mexico to take 4 months of something erroneously labeled, Total Immersion. Though this is a lot of Spanish, you will at best be able to form sentences and ask questions but you will NOT be able to comprehend the reply.

Mexican nationals do not speak the way you will hear Spanish spoken in a classroom or expensive language tapes!

And therein lies the rub.

What you will learn in a formal setting of language instruction, even if it is good instruction, will not be the same thing that is spoken on the streets of Mexico. Mexicans, in everyday life, do not speak like what you will hear in a formal classroom setting. Mexicans on the street speak almost entirely colloquially.

The daily street Spanish is so peppered with idiomatic expressions that you will hardly, if at all, be able to comprehend what is said to you! You will hear some recognizable words and phrases but will not be able to understand them in the context in which they are offered.

Here are some examples:

In a formal classroom you are taught how to greet someone like this: