The Language

We thought our diligence with Duolingo Spanish the past 6 months would pay off, but that controlled app environment has not translated into speaking Spanish naturally in Chile!

Or maybe it's the Swahili that rushes to our tongues whenever we try to speak anything other than English. We are usually speaking Swa-ish or Span-hili sentences and looking at each to figure out which part is which. It's frustrating, and also laughable.

But thank goodness we can understand more Spanish than we can produce, so we get along ok. But there is not much English spoken in Chile. I read that Chile uses the least English of any South American country. Mmmm, our next trips should be easier.😉

On our tours in the desert we mostly couldn't communicate with the others because of language differences.  But we found when we offered our halting Spanish to try and find out about them, the ice broke and they were happy to talk and were very patient. Those who spoke Portuguese, German or Chinese usually had a little bit of English to add.  

We've only met one other native English speaker and he was also the first person we met from the US.

We've also just figured out how to use Google translate. So there are ways to communicate. It would just be so much easier with fluent Spanish.