Do you need to know Spanish for Latin America? ¡No!

¡Hola América Latina! was the motto for us when we touched down on our second continent of our world tour a few weeks ago.

South America. It's associated with football, dancing, the Andes, growing coffee (and other drugs) and of course Spanish (sorry, Brazil). Especially when it came to the latter, I felt quite confident, almost superior, thanks to my one-time Spanish school club in grade 8.

In the run-up to our trip, we were often asked whether we knew Spanish if we wanted to travel to South America. No, I didn't manage more than the aforementioned one-time Spanish lesson. Leah downloaded one of the well-known language apps, but a week later she had really learnt the two vocabulary words un taco (means a taco) and un sandwich (attention, means sandwich), and that was pretty much it, finito.

So, always start with the ¿inglese?-question, usually answered with a decisive ¡NO! All good, then as always the following procedure: Two words in Spanish, usually one of the question words dónde (where) or cuánto (how much), paired with the subject of desire, usually baño (bathroom), autobús (bus) or, no, mostly really only baño (we are modest in our wishes). The answer you get is ¡si!, followed by a torrent of words that you enjoy just as much as the obvious compliment for your thoroughly accent-free Spanish. Until, unfortunately, a few snippets of words are repeated with the dreaded pause that assumes a question. At best, always answer ¡si gracías! and then quickly follow the baño-signs. What actually works well as an answer otherwise is Alemania. Apparently, blonde as a hair colour is not yet so widespread in Latin America.

If the question has not yet been answered satisfactorily, you simply reply to the barrage of Spanish with a counter barrage of English. From then on, there are two types of reaction: either the person continues to have a question mark in his/her face (yes, even that cool head-over-heels question mark), in which case I usually just switch to German, which of course doesn't help either and we then resign ourselves to our fate or ask the next person. The second, probably even more frequent reaction: The no inglese quickly becomes poquito inglese and you are surprisingly well understood. However, this doesn't mean that the answer is then given in English, but still in Spanish - which usually doesn't help you any more than reaction 1.

No, to summarise, we actually got on quite well. It's always the same vocabulary that you slowly learn (but definitely not the ones in those pocket phrasebooks like "Where can I get 3kg of meat?" or "How many children do you have?"). At the same time, our knowledge of French helps us to understand most of the questions (at least outside of Chile and Argentina).

This also led to amusing conversations, for example in a taxi in Calama, Chile. The taxi driver seemed very interested in the politics of the day (¿Alemania? Ahh, Merkel!). As I hadn't discussed politics for a while, I tried very hard to explain that Olaf Scholz would soon be facing a vote of confidence and that there would probably be early elections. It sounded something like this.

„No, no, Merkel esta… ehh, Leah, was means in the past? ¿Avanto? Nu [annoying distracting chunks of Danish from high school], uhh maintenant, i momento Olaf Scholz Chancelliere.“

[Taxi driver looks confused]

„But no bueno i momento, nuovo electiona, uhh, what is soon? ¿In futura?”

In any case, Leah sat in the back seat, fascinated.

Another funny misunderstanding, which has certainly not only confused the two of us, can usually be found at the bottom right of forms. There you are always asked again about your company (in German firma). Firstly when entering Bolivia:

Me: "Well, let's write N/A there."

Border control officer: "¡No, FIRMA! ¡FIRMA aqui!“

Me: "No, vamos privado aqui – uhh tourista!“

Later, we learn that firma means signature.

Nevertheless, I stand by the title of this article. You can easily travel to South America without Spanish and if you have the right diarrhea tablets with you, you don't even need to know our main vocabulary. I also don't know Italian when I go to Italy (okay, pizza, spaghetti, bad example). Then Polish. And the statement that nobody speaks English in Latin America is firstly not true and secondly irrelevant - what is Google Translate for and what else would you experience if you don't sign with your company name?