Why you should learn Spanish in Chile

Why you should learn Spanish in Chile

Learning Spanish in Chile is a bit like learning to climb by going up Mt Aconcagua on your first trip. To put it bluntly, Chilean Spanish is a tricky art to master. Foreigners who come to Chile quickly realise one thing, regardless of whether they speak Spanish or not. This is that Chileans speak a peculiar form of Spanish, where consonants are often dropped off words and locals speak at a very quick clip. All this makes them hard to understand. But it has one benefit that should interest anyone looking to learn Spanish: once you can converse with Chileans, speaking with locals throughout the rest of Latin America is a breeze.

How is Chilean Spanish different?

Let’s start with the dropped consonants. Like any country, Chileans have developed ways to shorten words, expressing themselves in the briefest manner. For example ‘Buenos Dias’ has become ‘Buen Dia’ or even ‘Buenos’. Saying thanks in Spanish is usually ‘Gracias’, but here in Chile forget the ‘s’ and make it Gracia. It’s almost as if Chileans have decided they don’t like the letter ‘s’, so the less use made of it, the better. This means Chilean Spanish is quickly identified elsewhere in South America. But sooner or later people are going to want to know where you are from, or where you learnt Spanish, so at least this saves them asking the question.

A second standout aspect of Chilean Spanish is the speed at which it is spoken. Listen to a taxi driver here, or a football commentator. It’s hard to believe that Chileans can fit so many syllables and so much information into so few seconds. And because they drop the ‘s’ they can cram even more words into a shorter space of time. With the speed at which Chileans speak, it can be harder to pick up intonation. So the sum of all this is that it’s often hard to understand what the heck Chileans are saying. Until you’ve been here for a while and learned to listen intently, that is.

The advantage of learning Chilean Spanish

There is, of course, a massive advantage to master Chilean Spanish. Because once you can converse with locals here, most of the other Spanish accents you’ll hear in South America will be easier to understand. Take Chile’s neighbours, Peru and Argentina. Compare a conversation with a taxi driver in Lima and Buenos Aires with one in Santiago. The Peruvian and Argentine are easier to follow. It’ll make you think your Spanish has gone up a few notches, just because you’re accustomed to Chilean Spanish. And that’s the beauty of learning Spanish Chile – once you’ve survived in Chile you can go anywhere in the Spanish speaking world!

Once you’ve got to grips with the speed and omitting ‘s’, etc, try this list of Chilean slang from Pepe’s Chile

If you are interested in learning Spanish from home, try these free Spanish grammar and vocabulary notes and games

Do you think that Chile is a good place to learn Spanish?

Tagged as: Chile, Opinions, Spanish