Daniel Welsch on Spain, Spanish & Teaching English
Kris Broholm and Daniel Welsch discuss Daniel's move from America to Madrid, Spain. They explore how he achieved a high level of Spanish fluency, assimilated locally, and offers practical tips for living abroad. Daniel also shares advice on starting an English teaching business in Spain.
July 20, 2018 · 49 min
EP 123: Daniel Welsch on Spain, Spanish & Teaching English
0:00 / 48:42
Guest
Daniel Welsch
What You'll Hear
- 1 Welcome & Why Immersion Matters
- 2 Not a Polyglot? Daniel's Language Depth
- 3 Moving to Spain & Visa Hurdles
- 4 Learning Spanish: Immersion vs. Perfection
- 5 English Teaching Career & Online Business
- 6 Best Tips for Learning English
- 7 Expat Life: Assimilating in Spain
- 8 Consistency: The Secret to Language Success
Links Mentioned
Questions Covered in the Show
Why did Kris Broholm invite Daniel Welsh to the Actual Fluency podcast?- 3m
How difficult is it for an American to obtain legal residency in Spain?- 8m
How did Daniel Welsh start his online English teaching blog and business?- 26m
What are some effective tips for learning English?- 30m
What is the best way to use reading for language acquisition?- 32m
What are the common challenges for expats living in Spain, especially regarding income?- 41m
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Hello everyone and welcome to the actual fluency podcast. This is episode 123. And today I'm joined by my friend Daniel Welsh. Daniel has been living in Spain for the last 10, 15 years and he's coming on to share how he got there in the first place, including learning Spanish to a really high level.
And the reason that I brought Daniel on is because his story, I think, really illustrates what you can do once you fully immerse yourself in a culture, including the language, of course. Many times I talk to people who learn maybe five, 10, it's all about the quantity of languages and not so much the depth or width of them. Uh they might have out, you know, single languages that really go deeper, but in general, we're talking about learning many languages, which is really a bit of a wrong narrative because you cannot learn many languages at once. you have to learn one and then another.
So, from time to time, I really like to bring people on who kind of demonstrate the practical use of language learning and also give some tips and advice on how to actually move to a brand new country. Daniel's from America, he's moved to Madrid in Spain and completely assimilated with the local culture and he's been living there for a while now. So, he has a lot of tips and tricks with with regards to that.
And also how you can start your own teaching business, uh to teach English to the local population, which can be a good way for people to live in their dream country or society, but might not be sure of where to make any money. So, if your first language is English, then it should be pretty easy to get a job or or get something going with the tips and tricks that Daniel is giving in this episode.
So, enjoy the episode and uh as always, I just want to give a quick shout out to this show's sponsor, Glossika. They've been uh very supportive of Actual Fluency and I really appreciate the assistance and support in bringing it out there. They basically provide audio courses and a lot of tools that you can interact with the material. It's a space repetition style program, so you hear the same sentences until you know them.
And um the really cool part I think is that they're kind of grammatical the sentences, so you are constantly exploring different grammatical sides of a language, and you're sort of learning it by intuition rather than just uh memorizing sentences. You always have these references to go back to. So, if you want to give Glossika a try, go to tryglossika.com and they have some free trials available and and if you like it, you can subscribe to all 50 languages for uh a monthly fee. Um but otherwise, you know, just say Chris sent you and uh have fun. Enjoy the episode.
Well, what I want to uh just before we begin recording, I just want to kind of uh take a chance to address what you wrote to me in before we started started this recording as you said, you said something about how, oh, I'm not really a polyglot, so I don't know why you want to talk to me basically.
Um and I just wanted to explain why uh not just for for you but also for the people listening, because the podcast itself has sort of become like the guests are usually people who have studied a lot of languages. They speak them to quite high levels. And that those people are quite interesting I think for sure because it's kind of a very small group of people in the world.
But what I'm actually really interested about is the the people who who have one language, one extra language they want to learn for whatever reason that may be. And I thought your story from from what I heard in in uh in Tenerife was a perfect example of someone who embraced it like truly embraced it, you know, not just like uh, oh I'm uh, you know, uh, dos cervezas, por favor, you know,
Speak good language, you mean?
Yeah, exactly, because a lot of the time, I mean, we're I would call myself a language encourager, like I would encourage people to do more language study. I would not call myself a polyglot encourager because I don't think a lot of people have any practical need for multiple languages, at least not at the same time.
And, let's say I speak five languages, well I can only speak one language at a time anyway, you know, so what I really think is is a good kind of focus to have is to focus on the one language you want to learn right now. And if you want to become, you know, like the Richard Simcots of the world and learn 20 languages, that's fine, but the effort and the job to do that is just one plus one, right?
Yeah.
Endlessly. So, so that's why I wanted to bring you on and uh you're a pretty cool dude as well, so it's always good to hang out and find an excuse to uh chat a little bit. If you're okay with all that, um we can just dive straight into it.
Sure.
Cool, so for the listeners at home who haven't heard about you yet, do you want to just give a brief story of yourself, how you got to where you are today?
Well, sure. I moved to Madrid, Spain when I was 21 years old. And, you know, before that I had done high school Spanish and a very minimal amount of uh university Spanish, but I found myself in Madrid, really having to speak Spanish every day, you know, for hours every day. And, you know, that was 14 years ago, basically, so I've had a lot of time to improve.
And, yeah, I mean, I also was teaching English, so now I'm a blogger and Youtuber and author and any number of things where I create uh language-learning materials for English-speaking people. Uh no, for um for people who want to learn to speak English, for Spanish-speaking people who want to learn to speak English. And yeah, that's about it.
Super cool. So, what what made you make that move originally? What drew you to Spain?
Well, I really was always looking for a way to get out of Arizona. I'm from Phoenix, Arizona, which is, um was no offense to anybody, not the most exciting cosmopolitan place in the world. And so, I just always wanted to have a different kind of life that I wasn't gonna be able to have there. And I looked into a couple of options.
Um in the summer of 2004, I was in Spain with my father and we um, you know, were wandering around taking this whole, let's see Spain and France in two weeks thing like like, you know, see Europe in two weeks, like American people do. And um, I met a girl who was living in Madrid, blah, blah, blah. It seemed like a better place to come than to come to somewhere who where I know where I knew absolutely no one. So, um I was looking into Argentina at the time and I guess they were just finishing up their huge crisis. Spain was booming and so I ended up in Spain.
Right. And were there any difficulties in terms of visas or or that kind of thing or were they pretty accommodating?
Oh, yes. People like to ask this question on uh public forums and well, I'll answer. I came with just a tourist visa and overstayed the tourist visa and I do not recommend anyone else does this. It's a bad idea.
Um, Spain has a process where if you hang around long enough and can document, you know, yourself and you have a job offer and you're reasonably integrated into Spanish society, they um, will eventually give you the visa, but in my case it took seven years. So, you know, unless you're really in this for the long haul, I recommend trying to get a student visa or something beforehand.
Right, because that's obviously always a problem. Uh a lot of people, myself included, always look to experience different cultures, maybe even trying to live there for an extended period of time, but find ourselves sort of limited by some of the visas to, you know, three months or maybe even less in some cases.
So, so it's more more that kind of I wasn't trying to get any uh, let's say, uh incriminatory evidence out of your uh from ages ago. Um but
No, no, um it's really, yeah, it's a big deal for, you know, people who want to see the world. It's you're just always gonna have to be dealing with bureaucracy in some way.
Yeah.
Yeah, struggling with bureaucracy. I just accepted it long ago that, okay, struggle with bureaucracy is part of my life and and that's it.
Yeah. And the Spanish, I guess, notoriously not great with bureaucracy in general, not just visas. I I guess the the times to get anything done, going to official bodies for paperwork and all that kind of stuff, I guess it's not I mean they don't hurry, do they, with with these things?
That's a slow, but the fact that I was able to show up on a tourist visa and end up eventually with, you know, permanent residency is a lot better than the US for example, where I'm from. You know, there's lots of people who just kind of show up in the US and 20 years later they still have no visa and, you know, all kinds of big problems. So, I'm very grateful that I had the opportunity to um to legalize my situation in Spain.
But yeah, but that's that's really cool. I think that they have that kind of practice. I don't know how many countries actually do that.
I know.
Where that's possible, but uh but it's cool that it worked out for you, definitely.
Yeah. And I think it's a great idea for political reasons too, because all I wanted to do was, you know, work hard and pay taxes and here we are, working hard and paying taxes.
Exactly, yeah. That should always be encouraged. Like I I'm sure the countries what they fear is that people come and and try and sort of take advantage of any social uh systems that might be present in the countries, but if you're if you just want to, you know, do your thing and uh go to work, pay your taxes, then I really think a lot of visa requirements should be reduced in many countries. Um but of course, it's a tough question for some other podcast, I'm sure, dealing with
Mm-hm.
The wonder lust of uh
Yep.
Visas. But um take us back to that time when you started or when you came to Spain. Uh of course, with the with the language itself in in in focus. You said you had in school, is it, um how how prevalent is Spanish in in the American school system?
Well, okay, so in the American school system it's I would think it's got to be the number one language. And in my school we only had two options. We had Spanish and French. Now there are more options in uh in my area but yeah, it was Spanish and French.
And Spanish at least we have a significant population of people from, you know, uh Central America in uh the Southwest US. So, um, you know, there's Spanish didn't seem so abstract. I didn't have a lot of opportunities to speak Spanish or necessity to speak Spanish when I was growing up, but eventually, um I got a job working in a kitchen. There were some Mexican guys in the kitchen. And we would speak Spanish when we were on shift and that was a lot of fun. That was my first um, you know, engagement with actual conversational Spanish outside of a classroom and that was that was awesome.
Right. And I guess that must have really helped you in turning the classroom style learning into more practical knowledge.
Yeah, absolutely. And like I don't even know that I enjoy studying languages. What I like is just, you know, learning the very basics and then going and making an idiot of myself by trying to to get into conversations with people. And so, you know, that really worked out well as a strategy.
Yeah. Is that what you did when you got to Madrid as well?
Yeah, basically. It was, you know, it was 2004, so we didn't have smartphones, we couldn't go around Google translating everything all the time.
Right.
You know, I would carry a a little, you know, pocket-sized dictionary around with me if I really, really needed it, but that's not real comfortable either. And otherwise I just kinda get into conversations with people.
Right.
See where it led.
It sounds so effortless uh when you put it like that but how long did it take you to get to a comfortable level where you could, well I wouldn't say fluent, that's a kind of a loaded word in in these context, but like what give us some time frames. What do you what do you think?
I mean, I did all the grammar stuff in high school, which was four years, and then, you know, my semester of university, which was a semester and then, you know, in probably within six months to a year of, you know, just speaking every day, I was pretty good. However, everyone has their definition of pretty good and there's plenty of people who tell me, oh yeah, Daniel, your Spanish used to suck.
That's nice of them.
Yeah, I I don't even remember ever thinking, wow, my Spanish sucks. I was always just like, this is awesome. I can, you know, kinda speak another language. But, you know, they have their idea of what fluent Spanish sounds like and I've, you know, probably never reached that standard.
Right.
I I always have my accent and up until, you know, two days ago at the gym, uh somebody asked me where I'm from and I told him I'd been living in Madrid and he's like, oh, that's why you speak a little bit of Spanish. And I didn't want to argue with him and be like, what are you talking about, a little bit of Spanish? But, you know, it still happens that people hear the accent and they just assume that, you know, you have a pretty low level. Not always true.
I think that's really funny. I I tried a similar one where, you know, when you go out to people, they don't really know what you've been doing. You meet new people in a new workplace for instance, and you say, oh I've been learning a bit a bit of Russian on the side for myself at home. And they're like, oh okay, so so you can say a few words then and it's like, yeah, I've sort of been doing this for, you know, ages and can do conversations and stuff, but yeah, you think I can say how are you and I'm gonna have two beers but that's alright, don't worry about it.
Yeah, it's hard to, you know, to define fluency as you said and, you know, if you're just defining fluency as you can string two sentences together then, yeah. But, you know, a lot of people I think make the mistake of um wanting to to speak perfectly and, you know, they think they'll they'll start speaking as soon as they know absolutely everything about the grammar and then they'll speak fluently. And that never works.
No, because try a language like Russian, you mean I mean, you'll never know all the grammar really. Unless you're some kind of machine. It's just too much. Uh so it But I think that's is generally a problem. So it's great that you had the natural inclination to do the opposite, just kind of dive into it.
Yeah. It's uh it's really paid off and even now, you know, people occasionally take me aside and they're like, trying to tell me some things that I've done wrong grammatically and it's like, yeah, okay, I remember. I probably learned that when I was 16. Haven't thought about it since. I'm just trying to say stuff that sounds good to me and ideally that I've heard somebody else say and, you know, there you go.
Right. Yeah, it it's it's, well you don't need to be flawless. I don't think native speakers are anyway, so it's kind of unfair that non-native speakers are being judged at that level.
Yeah, and
Of course,
Um, our friend Ollie has videos about like how to use the subjunctive in Spanish and, you know, it's great that he knows that. I would not be able to tell you very much about how to use the subjunctive in Spanish. It's just one of those things that, you know, I've picked it up along the way and if I do it badly, then I do it badly, but, you know, I couldn't tell you the the 24 reasons why you use the subjunctive in Spanish.
Right. So, for those who don't know, it's like the if I could have done that, I would have or, you know, the it's a it's some kind of um, what do you call it?
It's a grammatical mood, I believe, and you use it for sort of hypothetical things, unknown things, you know, things where there's more emotion involved.
They love that in German as well. And I guess English also has it in a well in in British English they use it a lot as well. Like could I have that instead of can I have that, you know, when you order at Starbucks.
Yes and consider them, you know, we use the past to be more hypothetical, which is about all we do.
Yeah. English luckily not as difficult as as some languages but you know, there are other problems, I guess with pronunciation and uh kind of a strange uh pattern there where there's no rhyme or reason to it at all.
Yeah, I've been teaching English, um, you know, both to people and online, you know, both to people face-to-face and online since 2004, 2005 when I moved to Madrid and yeah, the pronunciation is usually the big issue.
Hey guys, I just wanted to take a quick break here and give a shout out to the sponsor of today's show, which is Glossika. Glossika has been extremely supportive of the Actual Fluency podcast and website over the years and I'm really thankful and grateful that they wanted to come on board for this kind of re-release of the podcast. This new era.
And you know, what is Glossika? Well, essentially it's kinda like a spaced repetition system, but with audio-based sentences. So, you have listening practice, you have speaking practice, and every day you can do reps. So, you log on to the Glossika site and the software, using some fancy AI technology, actually places you on your skill level and suggests sentences and content that are appropriate.
What I really like is you can log on to Glossika and just press a button and it will do all the reps you need for that day. This is in contrast to other websites where you have to constantly click or type or and, you know, there's merit to that, but I really like Glossika's approach as well. Um so, if you want to get started with Glossika, check it out at actualfluency.com/glossika.
How did you decide to get into teaching? Was that just, well, this is my kind of MO, you know, I'm an American in in in Madrid, this is one of the sought-after skills that people have here or or did you put any uh deeper reasons into it?
It would be so great if I could say there was a deep reason. I um, I looked at, you know, the possibility of working in a in a bar or something and saw what that kind of work looked like in Spain and decided not to do it. So I ended up teaching. And yeah, it just I was expecting to hate it and to, you know, do it for a few months and then come up with something else, but in the end it ended up being a lot of fun. So, yeah, I'm happy to have that experience.
So, how did you go about it? Did you become did you put a a post in Starbucks or did you take a a course, some kind of CELTA-ish thing or how do you start becoming a teacher when you've just landed in in a foreign country?
Yeah, I I took a CELTA. We had enough internet that I could find out there was like a CELTA course that was starting the next uh the next month. And so, I I took a CELTA in December of 2004 and we finished just before Christmas and so I went and I handed out some CVs in different language schools in Madrid and, you know, I don't know exactly what it's like now, but but it was pretty easy to find a job. I started working just after the New Year in the end. And, you know, the quality of the jobs is always less than um miraculous. But, you know, you can find a job.
Right. And it is it's about experience as well, I guess.
Yeah, I mean and it's it's fun if you enjoy that kind of thing. I just took it as like, hey, I get to talk to people all day. I get to ask them silly questions about Spanish culture and it's, you know, easier and more fun than a lot of things people do to earn a living. So, it was great.
Yeah. And did when did you start writing about that experience online?
It's been it's been eight years. So, 2010 is when I started the blog.
Oh, really? So, that's a that's a couple of years after.
Yeah, eight years. And, um, you know, I just started because I had a friend who told me, you could really expand your reach by, you know, giving a few lessons online and, you know, just having a blog and he set me up with the simplest possible blog and I wrote some stuff. I always liked writing and, you know, this is also way easier than than trying to write literary fiction or something. So, I was able to get into that and just make a habit of writing a couple times a week and, you know, um about five years later I was able to quit my teaching face-to-face and just work full-time on the online stuff.
Wow, that's that's that's not bad at all, I would say, for for those days.
In five years, you know, there's there's all these overnight success stories where people make it look like it's just like one day I was fed up with my corporate job and the next day I was, you know, living on the beach in Thailand as a high-paid consultant. But I don't know anybody who's actually done it that fast. There's usually a lot of backstory to these, you know, overnight successes.
Yeah. Uh I think blogging is something that takes takes quite a while just for mostly, I think, for Google because that's the biggest traffic source for most people. You need to gain some authority in in terms of the web like you can't just become the authority on on English learning after, you know, a couple of months.
So, but but I would highly suggest people that in fact, I've done I've suggested people that before. Um especially, I think, foreign language blogs about these things because the uh the demand could be quite high, but the actual competition could be really low. Like uh, for instance, I have a friend who does a blog in Hungarian and he I have also have a friend, you you know, Lydia, she was writing in Slovakian and, you know, all she was became a a national celebrity.
Like, there's no way if you, I mean, she we she's very talented and amazing uh person so she probably would have made a a lot of success in English as well. But I think there's a lot of room today for people to write about experiences, especially with culture and language, in different languages. Like uh you're do you're teaching English from Spanish, which is already unique in a way.
Yeah, and, you know, the other thing that people need to think about is what is their ideal audience Googling? First off, if you, you know, just having an ideal audience is uh a big step towards starting a successful blog and then, you know, they sit down to Google something, what exactly are the terms they're using and if we're talking about Spanish people trying to learn English, then they're using Spanish to try to learn English. So,
Yeah. Of course, yeah.
That's all you uh really need to think about there.
Yeah, we I'm sure we could do episodes about uh the actual sort of entrepreneurial side of of language blogging, but I wanted to just include it because I think a lot of people they're sitting out there, they have these this amazing hobby, let's say they're learning uh Chinese or something.
And they have a I think a really great message that could be extremely not only entertaining, but also very useful to many people to follow that journey. And and if you if they do it, you know, a couple of years or or however long it takes, they might find themselves in the position that you are in, where suddenly you can you can just do that full-time, you know, So I would definitely encourage people to do that.
I did that myself. Uh I wasn't able to, or so far haven't been able to build up Actual Fluency to to a serious full-time venture, but definitely build it up to uh if I was living in a slightly lower cost of living country, I could definitely do it. So, and I'm on my fifth year as well, so it's not overnight either.
Yeah.
Yeah, I you know, if if you actually find somebody who legitimately becomes successful at something big like this overnight, then let me know cuz I would love to interview them about it.
Yeah, get all the secrets out. I don't think it's possible.
No, I don't really think there is a secret. I think hard work over a long period of time is the secret.
Yeah, for sure.
That's what most people don't want to do. It's exactly the same as learning a language.
Yeah.
People think, okay, what's the um what's the hack? What's going to help me reach fluency, you know, in two weeks? And it's like, yeah, um hard work for a couple of years would be much more effective there.
Yeah, exactly. So, how did you I assume when you were working at the language school they gave you some kind of textbook or curriculum for you to go through with the students or did you have to do it all yourself?
Yeah, um, well, here's the fun thing about uh the fact that there's just so much demand for native uh native English speakers as teachers in, you know, some countries is that, you know, most of us are not incredibly well qualified. At the CELTA, you know, we learned classroom management and uh some basic principles behind teaching people a language, but we didn't learn grammar for example.
And so I, uh, you know, spent the first year or two learning the grammar sort of on my own. And I was still able to have a lot of fun in class and if anybody learned any grammar from me, it was probably by accident. But I was just able to give them, you know, an interesting uh, listening activity just like, let's talk and listen and and I'll teach you the pronunciation of some things and you can listen to my my ridiculous cowboy accent that I sort of had difficulty dropping.
And yeah, it was a lot of fun, but probably I I sort of hit my stride in after about two years teaching when I understood the grammar on a high enough level that I could actually explain stuff. Like I can explain a lot of stuff in English now, uh that, you know, just native speakers don't think about because we just do it.
Yeah, definitely. I can see that. And and and how did how did you pivot that into the online platform? When when did that happen? I assume that was uh down the road as well.
Yeah, that was um eight years ago again in in 2010. And um, yeah, basically I started just writing about a few of the basic principles like, you know, improve your vocabulary by reading and things like that.
And then I started just thinking like, what are the questions people ask me in class all the time and why not turn those into articles? And, you know, that's pretty much still what I'm doing. So in class or common errors that people will make like people Spanish people have a lot of difficulty with I'm bored or I'm boring.
Mm, I see, yeah. And that's a dangerous one to say, to be honest.
Yeah, and um, and so, you know, I've got uh a couple articles and videos and stuff about those sorts of adjectives now, what's the difference between I'm bored, I'm boring, I'm interested, I'm interesting, et cetera.
Yeah.
Just because, you, know, you hear people make the same mistake over and over and you, you know, learn to uh deal with their pain points there.
That's super useful and and I also think that the that that must have been the sort of the success of it because those are exactly what people would be searching for.
What's what's the difference between bored and boring? I'm sure people would search for that directly.
Yeah, exactly. Um, not to get into the uh the entrepreneurial aspects of blogging again, but yeah, a lot of people have a blog where it's not really clear what the utility of most of their articles is supposed to be. It's like it doesn't necessarily address anybody's pain point. And, you know, I've been guilty of this too, of course. I just write something because I want to write it and and when nobody reads it, I think like, oh, that's that sucks. But, um, you know, if it can specifically address somebody's question, then that's so much better.
Yeah. And what what I mean you mentioned pronunciation. What what else have you found in terms of learning English and and maybe there are some things that, you know, it's not unique to Spanish speakers, but just in general with English like, I'm sure there are a lot of English speakers listening to this for for listening practice, but also obviously to pick up some tips on how to improve themselves. Uh so what kind of advice would you give them uh from around the world just learning the wonderful language of English?
Advice for learning English? Well, there's a lot of different things you can do. Um one of the most common pieces of advice that I give is just read more. Like people tend to avoid reading uh because it's too difficult at the beginning or because they don't read very much in their first language. And yeah, you just got to jump in and and do it even if it's difficult.
And, you know, secondly, you really have to listen in some way because with English as we said, the pronunciation is very different than the spelling and it's also very different than the pronunciation of Spanish or other languages. We have all these different vowels and consonant sounds and um if you're just trying to like people do the sort of literal um transcription, like this is what it would sound like if it were Spanish, but that doesn't work at all because it's not Spanish. Like learn the international phonetic alphabet for for example and, you know, figure out what things actually sound like. And, you know, try to imitate those sounds as much as you can.
Right. So, you see that I find that interesting that you would recommend reading because to me your style sounds a lot like that would be the last thing you would do uh for for learning a language because it's kind of like
No, actually, maybe I exaggerated how much time I was spending speaking there. Because I was also on the bus a lot like going to classes in different parts of the city and so yeah, I was reading um but I was reading things that interested me. I was reading like native-level stuff even if it was very painful at the beginning.
So I was reading the newspaper, back when you, you know, buy a newspaper. I would take the newspaper around all day and I would, you know, read the newspaper. And, you know, I read sort of cheap paperbacks that I could find that seemed interesting to me and so I learned a lot of vocabulary that way too. What I wasn't doing was reading a lot of um adapted stuff or stuff that's, you know, only for language learners.
But how did you get over any difficulties? Did you write down words you didn't know and then look them up or how did you did you just take it from context?
Mostly, I took it from context. And, you know, another thing that that stops people from reading is that they, you know, see one word that they don't know and so they think they have to stop and like pull out their dictionary and if you're just starting, you're never gonna get anywhere that way. You're always just and I remember it being very painful and slow at the beginning trying to figure out what things meant, but, uh yeah, context.
So, just read through it and and in the beginning don't worry so much about understanding that much. Just kind of read and just get all the inputs and see the patterns and spelling and yeah, I think I think that's good advice actually.
I just actually wanted cuz something I haven't done for Russian very much is to read sort of contemporary uh level language. So, I have some old stories, you know, Dostoevsky and all those and they're very difficult for for first of all, but they're also very old language, so they had to use different spelling, they used different phrases, um whereas the newspaper is kind of like modern language. It's not text language in the what people would send on Facebook messenger or WhatsApp or something.
Uh but it's kind of like a a snapshot of what the language is today, I think, the new the the the newspaper. So, I actually just got a subscription for a Russian newspaper, apparently there is one here in the UK. So, they sent it to my mailbox every Friday. And yeah, I can't understand everything. I can understand pretty much what the gist is of of most sentences.
But I definitely think that if you start looking up every word you don't know or every word you're uncertain about, first of all, you're not going to read the newspaper very much because you just can't be bothered to constantly look up words. And secondly, it takes away that contextual practice where you just kind of you just flowing through the sentences and just getting that input, which the brain, I mean, the brain is magical, isn't it? You just read stuff over and over and eventually the brain is like, hmm, maybe this means this. And then you confirm it somehow. I don't I don't know how it works, but it's quite amazing.
My recommendation is to only use the dictionary if it's a word that just keeps reappearing and you have no idea.
Right.
Otherwise, there's plenty of stuff you just don't need to look up. You can figure it out.
Yeah, or it's not a very important word anyway.
Yeah.
They that that does happen too. But if you're reading an article about clocks and you're unsure about what clocks mean, then maybe checking that one is okay. Just to get get somewhere.
Yeah. On the other hand, like you can what was it? There's this musical instrument, ah, a lute. I remember in one of the classes I was teaching, there was this whole article about lutes that I gave for homework. It was a test preparation a test preparation class.
And um, you know, everybody did the homework, they read through the article and uh they came to class the next day and they're like, Daniel, what's a lute? And um, but they'd still managed to do a fairly good job on the homework because you don't need to know exactly what a lute is in order to like I I don't know exactly what a lute is. It's some sort of little medieval guitar thing. You know, you you don't need an in-depth knowledge of lutes in order to to figure out what the text is about, generally.
Right.
Yeah, I agree with you. It's a bit like learning all the different types of fish. They're just a fish, you know, it doesn't really matter that I don't know what a like I think animal species is one of the hardest to to learn because you have words in your own language and then in other languages they're completely different.
Yeah, and you know, how often do I need to talk about? I know the Spanish word for platypus. It's ornitorrinco.
Right.
But I just think it's an interesting word. There's no um reasonable circumstance in which I'm gonna have to talk about a platypus.
Right. So, it sounds like the word for
Like how many animals do you deal with? It's like you get past your cows and your horses and your.
Yeah, exactly.
cats.
And you don't know how the animals look anyway. So, if I went to an aquarium and there was like a bunch of fish, I wouldn't have any idea what separates like a, I don't know, a place from a I can't even think of two fish at the moment. So, you see how that's how bad it is. Like herring I could probably tell because it's a slightly smaller fish, but uh
That's the north of Europe. Down here in uh Spain, fish is very important and you have to know your different fish.
Oh, right. Okay, yeah.
Also, I was in an aquarium yesterday here in Barcelona.
So, did you bring a an English class and showed them all the English fish names?
I did not, but it was um here in Barcelona and it was in three languages. It was in Catalan and Spanish and English. Everything in the museum.
Wow.
So, you know, I got to do a little bit of uh linguist linguistic immersion and comparing the the three languages there.
That's very nice. So, you're you're now a resident expert on the aquatics in in three languages.
I guess so, yeah.
Not a not a small feat by any means for sure. All right, so I I think that's pretty much all I was thinking about. So, um, uh, is there anything else you felt like, well, first of all, I wanted to give you a chance to just uh tell people you the name of your site and where they can find more about you if they wanted to look into you and uh some of the stuff you've been doing.
I've got a bunch of different websites. If people want to know more about life in Spain, they can go by Expatmadrid.com. Uh the title of that blog is The Chorizo Chronicles. Chorizo as in a sausage-like product. Um I just try to have fun on there, but I try to also give useful information about life in Spain.
And if people want more about English, they can find me on YouTube just using my name, Daniel Welsh or they can go to one of my blogs. Um, MadridIngles.net for example. Um, I guess maybe you have show notes or something with this.
Yeah, definitely.
So you can have that spelled out.
It's yeah. Episode 123, so if you search for that, then you'll see the show notes underneath. I'll be sure to put those links in there.
Right.
And um, looking forward to to seeing you somewhere around the world, hopefully in Spain. I I do love Spain, I must say myself. I've only been there twice, but I think I don't know if it's a good place to live though. I mean, you've obviously lived there a long time.
But for me personally, I think that it's from my initial reaction, it's a very nice place to be for a short period of time. Because especially during the summer, I can imagine it gets quite crazy with the heat and the tourists and and uh like the what's going on, but when I was there for a week, it was amazing to, you know, be out late, eat at amazing places and, you know, you got the great produce and products everywhere. You have quality cheeses and meats just in abundance, you know, that was fantastic.
Definitely. We eat better than a lot of people in a lot of countries and, you know, even sort of on a budget, you still can get pretty good food here. And, you know, otherwise, I really love Spain.
Um a lot of people from, you know, the US or Canada or or Northern European countries, their enjoyment is kind of limited by their tolerance of lower salaries. And, you know, I wasn't earning very much money back in the US, so for me, this was actually pretty good. And so I had no no big issue with the lower salaries for, you know, for years and years, but if you have big student loans or something, you know, Spain makes that difficult because it's hard to earn a salary that's comparable to what you would get in, you know, in the UK or whatever.
Right, for sure. But I think also the whole expat question, I mean, I I really enjoy talking about relocating, especially to the country of the language you're studying or the culture you're interested in. I think for many, that is the dream when it comes to this.
I think everybody should have the experience of living outside their country at least for a few months. It's a really, you know, eye-opening experience any way you do it. So, learning or not, just go somewhere and and hang out as long as your visa will let you and it'll definitely teach you a lot of stuff.
Yeah, I mean, just the on the last minute here, is there anything about the US that you ever miss or have missed during your your time in Spain?
Um, it's been so long that no, I don't really miss much about the US. I originally missed a lot of, you know, cultural stuff, but now everything's on the internet and I can, you know, watch TV shows if I, you know, want to watch the TV shows in original version, I can get on the internet and do that somehow and, you know, I can get English books on Amazon. And yeah, the internet's really made the whole expat situation a lot less taxing, I think, that you don't have to, you know, have a complete disconnect with with your past.
Right. And I guess if you're not a Spanish-speaking and you move there, there's still English language meetups and there's still like communities of expats that meet up and have different kind of groups and.
Yeah.
And I guess you can get everything done in English, not that we want to encourage that in on a language-learning podcast, but maybe if you need a little bit of a early encouragement or just to give it a shot, you know, you might want to start out with that. Um it it is possible to get by, I suppose, in in Madrid and so.
Yeah.
I don't think I don't think you'd have a great experience if you like went to a government office and tried to speak to them only in English. And, you know, if you're if you have to go to the doctor or the hospital or something, it's a lot better for you if you know enough enough Spanish to get by or, you know, bring a a trusted friend. But, yeah, a lot of stuff you can get done. If you're just walking around and and ordering, you know, beer and hamburgers, then you can do that in English at this point in most parts of the world, I assume.
Oh yeah.
Oh yeah, for sure.
Oh yeah.
I think so, but it it does get more exciting when you start to pick up the local language and uh Yeah, and become a pilot. You've truly assimilated, I must say, you know, there's you've really become part of the culture and and I guess you you couldn't imagine it any other way at this point.
No, it's funny that I, you know, I feel I feel more, you know, happy about some of the experiences I had back in the US just because it's been it's been so long and, you know, more proud of being an American or whatever, whatever Americans are supposed to say about this. Um, but also, you know, I don't have to deal with that anymore on any deep level and I can just be happy here in Spain and uh, yeah. Nobody's ever going to to look at me in my, you know, big red beard and think I'm Spanish.
Right.
But, you know, I am able to to handle the culture in a pretty good way and and it's definitely been a great experience.
Do people reply to you in English a lot?
Here in Barcelona, it's more common and, you know, um, in Madrid not so much. In Madrid, they're not uh as as intent on learning languages, but in in the coastal cities, generally, people are more used to tourists and so they'll just, you know, hit you with the English straight up.
Right.
And you tell them, you just continue.
Yeah, I mean we work something out. I don't get offended if somebody imagines I don't speak Spanish because I really don't look like anybody's idea of a Spanish speaker. So, you know, I I speak to them in English or Spanish or a mix and we just, you know, figure something out.
Yeah, and nobody's able to look at another person and uh guess their whole life story.
Exactly. And I actually not to to keep dragging dragging on the outro here, but I just had an interesting experience in London where I was at a Scandinavian place and I wasn't sure what the the protocol was for just asking if somebody speaks my language either.
So, it's kind of a funny situation because the the place is called Scandinavian Kitchen and they sell stuff from Scandinavia. So, I'm like, are they Swedish, Norwegian, Danish or are they just English, normal English people just hired to be, you know, a clerk there. So, I I never I just pretended I was English and just did it that but I'm wondering what the protocol would be in like in figuring that out. Cuz I also feel it's a little bit rude to just go up to people and say, do you speak this when you're not in that country? I don't know. It just seems seems weird to me.
Yeah. Well, my girlfriend is Indian and so we go to Indian restaurants and, you know, she'll look at the waiter or whatever and he'll look back at her and I can see there's this moment where they're deciding whether to speak English because they probably both speak English well, my girlfriend definitely speaks English, but they probably can do pretty well with English. They could speak Spanish because we're in Spain or they could, you know, pick an Indian language and see how that works. And, you know, I've I've seen this with her multiple times and it's just for me, I find it hilarious. But yeah, it's got to be uh some sort of a complex protocol to to figure out which language you should speak to somebody and.
Yeah, I don't know. I think it's funny anyway. But yeah, I can I can just imagine that situation in the restaurant, especially with countries that have multiple languages.
Yeah, especially those with too many languages.
Yeah. That's amazing. Well, anyway, Daniel, thank you so much for coming on and and sharing your uh your life story and uh and and views on on the world and language learning and teaching and
Thanks for having me.
And Spanish, it's uh it's a pleasure to hear some uh some fresh perspectives and and uh yeah, like I said, I think it's really cool what you've done and it you know, when you look at it this much later, was it 15 years on, 14 years on. It it sounds so effortless, you know, oh I just moved to Madrid, oh I just learned Spanish, oh I just started a blog.
Of course, always have to appreciate the work that's gone into every single week of of your life in that time. But at the same time, I think anyone can really do it. Anyone can replicate it, going to the country of where they want to go with the language they they want to speak and and build something, whether that's becoming the the best German teacher in Taiwan or I don't know. Uh anyone can build it up. I think we live in a time where anything's possible. So,
Yeah.
So, I think it's cool.
And yeah, I guess I make it sound effortless, but the key is just the long period of time.
Consistency.
Consistency. Yeah, it's like I was doing this every day for a long period of time and I was doing things that I enjoyed, which always helps to make it seem like less of an effort.
Yeah, and that's exactly like language learning itself. So, in that way we've come full circle in uh just uh do things you enjoy and doing them consistently and and you will see that whatever it is you want to achieve will will become a success.
Definitely.
Cool, thank you so much, Daniel.
Thanks, Kris.