Why Learn Spanish?

- by Iliana Hernandez Leon (founder of The Spanish Cat)

More than half a billion people worldwide speak Spanish.

After English, Spanish is the most widely spoken language.

Putting aside the practical and commercial use of a language, to learn another, besides our own, allows us to comprehend "different worlds", and be witness to the diversification that language itself has undergone throughout time.

Studying another language, you become more conscious of your own, you listen to yourself more carefully, you enrich your vocabulary and you start to understand better the structures you use every day. It is a challenge to yourself, to see how open you are to other ways of expression and feeling, to other cultures.

But, the question is, which language to study among so many that exist? Maybe the one you need for work, perhaps the one that is spoken in the country you are visiting this summer, or maybe, just maybe, the one that every time you hear it it gives you a tingle up your spine and you're almost sure you understand without ever speaking a word.

Me, I know my language. It's Spanish. I can describe it as a warm language, cozy and loving that allows you to celebrate, to raise your voice to tell the world how angry, how happy, or sad you're feeling, with just the right words and without offending. It is a language that takes possession of you and you of it.

Spanish Culture

Language forms an integral part of any "Culture". You can't study one without the other.

Culture hides within it the idiosyncracies of a society, its beliefs, traditions, and way of life, and languague expresses these things.

If you really want to learn another language you must lose yourself in the culture of the country that speaks that language. This way, it becomes easier and more fun to learn. It also gives us the opportunity of acting, pretending we're someone else, living in another place, far away, running away for a while so, as we come back to reality we have an enrichment of the heart, intellect and soul.

Spanish language can take you in less that an hour to the summit of Machu-Pichu in Peru, down through the Cañon del Sumidero in Chiapas, Mexico, to eating gorditas and taking an Alebrije with you in your dreams, to finishing up with a Flamenco night in España, shivering with the potency of their song. Spanish gives you a new way of saying I love you and allows you to change the flavour of your meals.