If speaking Spanish or understanding native Spanish speakers is more frustrating for you than rewarding, I have a pretty good idea why. It’s because you have been lied to. I know because I was told the same lie when I was studying Spanish — and buying every learning-Spanish product I could get my hands on in order to improve my Spanish.
Sounds good to you? In fact, does it sound too good to be true? Well, that’s because it isn’t true. It’s a flat-out lie! Unless your idea of speaking Spanish fluently is just knowing enough Spanish to say “Hello. How are you? And I want to order a beer”
If you’ve been receiving my emails for quite a while, then I am sure that you are familiar with my story. And if you are not, please bear with me while I share my story with you. So that you know how I came to the realization that it was all a lie.
Today, I’m a retired attorney (“gracias” to the success that I have had with our Learning Spanish Like Crazy and Verbarrator products.) But I can remember my second job out of law school. I had been at that job for about 3 or 4 years. And I had been trying to learn Spanish on my own for about two years at that time. Struggling to learn Spanish is a better way to put it.
It was a very small store-front law firm located in the Bronx, New York. There was a rapidly growing Latino population in that neighborhood. And my boss wanted to attract more Spanish speaking clients so that he could grow his personal injury law practice.
So we hired a bilingual para-legal. The para-legal’s name was Bill. Bill served as a translator when Spanish-speaking clients came into the office. Bill was in his early 50s. And not only did Bill speak Spanish fluently but his Spanish was impeccable. Bill’s Spanish pronunciation was perfect. Bill must have known every Spanish word in the dictionary.
Since learning Spanish was my p ion and Bill spoke Spanish fluently, I had to find out from Bill what was his key to learning how to speak Spanish so well. Bill had a very Anglo-Saxon sounding last name. So I umed that Spanish was not his first language. But just to rule that out, I asked Bill was one of his parents a native Spanish speaker.
So I asked him, did he start learning Spanish at a young age. Again, Bill told me “no.” In fact, Bill told me that he didn’t start learning Spanish until he was 39 years old.
At this point, I started wondering: “Maybe Bill is just naturally gifted at learning foreign languages?” And then I asked myself the inevitable:
“Could it be possible that maybe I just didn’t have any talent for learning foreign languages?”
But then Bill confided in me that he almost flunked French in high school and that he was not naturally gifted at learning foreign languages.
So that’s when I practically begged Bill to share with me his secrets to learning how to speak Spanish fluently. And Bill told me that one of his secrets was to learn lots of Spanish vocabulary.
According to Bill, it doesn’t matter if your goal is to speak Spanish fluently or just being able to communicate with Spanish speakers with pure confidence when traveling to a Spanish-speaking country – you need to know lots of Spanish vocabulary words and phrases. Or to paraphrase Bill, “Knowing lots of Spanish vocabulary words, will make the difference between accomplishing your Spanish-speaking goals, or not even being able, to hold a conversation, with a 4 ½ year old Spanish speaker.”
That’s when I said “Bill, wait a minute. I’m learning Spanish now with one of the most popular Spanish courses on the market. And according to the company that developed the course, you only need to know between 400 to 500 Spanish words to become fully conversational in Spanish.”
According to Bill, that company had told me a big lie. They had lead me to believe one of the biggest learning-Spanish lies that you will ever hear. And that’s when I told Bill “with all due respect, that company is making millions and millions of dollars. So I think I should listen to them.”
Bill did not argue with me. Instead, he said to me “Patrick we are going to have a little experiment. For the rest of the day, we will only speak to each other in Spanish. And we will see just how well the two of us will be able to communicate when you only… 
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