¿Habla español?

Doing a round the world trip on motorbikes involves more than just prepping bikes and plotting the road to follow. We both think it is a good icebreaker to be able to communicate with people in their native language. Being Dutch we get lessons in English, German and French at secondary school. Speaking English and German for the both of us is not a problem. French is a little pain in the ass, but we will manage.

So we looked up on the internet what the most spoken languages in the world are. It turns out to be the following:

1. Chinese
2. English
3. Spanish
4. Arabic
5. Bengal

We think learning is Chinese nearly impossible, especially for those like us who aren’t too good with languages. Besides it’s only spoken in a very specific part of the world and chances are very slim we will be driving through China as rules and regulations for crossing the country unfortunately are very strict.
More or less the same obstructions apply for Arabic and Bengal. Above all Arabic writing doesn’t make any sense to us. We just hope most of the people we are going to meet, know one of the languages we master.

Marianne always wanted to learn Spanish. There also are many different countries around the world where they speak Spanish (mainly central en southern America). In some countries (like Cuba) you’ll really have a hard time, if you aren’t able to speak any Spanish. Besides, it might enable us to more or less understand Portuguese (though it is a totally different language) speaking people, as well.

So Spanish it is! We searched the internet and found a school in Almere where we can take evening courses. For us this probably is far better than just ordering some tapes/CDs or doing some internet course. Maybe we ‘habla español’ in no time!