No Subtitles Necessary

Issue #45 · My longest committed relationship is with the Duolingo owl.

Hi there, I’m Emily! 🙋🏼‍♀️ For those who are new, here’s a quick catch-up:

Five years ago, I packed my life into a suitcase and hit the road, moving to a new city every few months. Now, I write stories about the quirks, chaos and realities of living abroad, intertwined with my attempt to design a happy, meaningful life.

If you enjoy this post, stick around — something big is coming later in 2025!

No Subtitles Necessary

Despite living in a surf town full of barefoot hippies and woo-woo free spirits, I’ve never dabbled in psychedelics. Not mushrooms, not ecstasy, not LSD, not a sip of ayahuasca. So I suppose I don’t know this for sure — but I can’t imagine that even the finest concoction of chemically engineered hallucinogenic giggle dust sold by a wizard could come close to the rush of dopamine I felt upon receiving this compliment from my Mexican friend the other day:

“Emi, no mames — no puedo creerlo, tu español ha mejorado un chingo!” which loosely translates to: “Wow, Emily, your Spanish has improved a shit ton!”

After 1,900+ days of Duolingo, 350+ podcast¹ episodes, 120 hours of formal one-on-one classes, and two years of brute-forcing myself though conversations in which I was in over my head, I’m proud to claim that I finally feel conversational in Spanish.

I no longer translate from English in my head before speaking, I use sarcasm and crack (sometimes funny) jokes, and I usually only need to ask for the definition of a word when it's a Mexican slang deep cut. Sure, I still make errors in every third-ish sentence, there’s advanced grammar that still trips me up, and I still have a very thick (cute??²) accent. But I can now generally let things run on autopilot and hope for the best.

It’s pretty wild that much of my social life now happens in a foreign language — several of my closest friends here don’t speak much English at all. The impact this has had on my experience living in Mexico has been unsurprisingly enormous: Comparing my first two years here (when successfully communicating with a taxi driver felt like an achievement) vs. the past two years is night and day (the latter being a heck of a lot more fun). I’ve gone from being a silent spectator of Mexican culture to fully embracing and participating in it — and in turn, I've developed a deep appreciation and love for this country that no words in either language could do justice.

Part of me wonders if this is why I’ve leaned into writing (in English) recently. It’s almost as if this blog has become an outlet for all of the complex emotions and nuanced opinions that I struggle to express with exact clarity in Spanish. Maybe not, but the timing is certainly suspicious — or perhaps my brain just needs a place where the por/para dilemma doesn’t exist.

Either way, my love for words, semantics and etymology has taken on a life of its own, making the past few years a fun challenge. But don’t get me wrong, it’s also taken plenty of hard work — despite what many gringos seem to think, you won’t learn a foreign language simply through osmosis when living in a different country (and certainly not if you only use your Spanish to order at restaurants). “You’ve lived there for five years, you must be fluent by now!” — if I had a nickel.

I say this because even with all of the progress I’ve made, there’s still a looong way to go. Each time I think I’m getting the hang of it, an irregular verb or funky grammar rule always pops up, reminding me that language learning is a marathon and I’m running it in chanclas.

Fortunately, I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. In fact, when I head back to Valencia in May, I’m planning to enroll in three months of intensive classes — this is partially a scheme to stay in Spain longer than my allotted 90 days, partially so that I can finally learn how the heck to conjugate vosotros, and partially (okay, mostly) because I’m FOR SURE throwing myself a graduation party upon completion. Oh, and don’t worry — todos ustedes están invitados.

Quick tip for anyone learning a new language: Follow tons of meme accounts on Instagram, so when you’re mindlessly scrolling, you’re at least learning something (and laughing), too.

---

Recommended related posts:

• In Pesos We Trust: At first, living life in pesos was jarring, but I’ve learned to appreciate how a currency can carry the personality of a place.

• No Hay Luz — No power, no WiFi, no cell service. Bienvenidos a Puerto Escondido!

---

1. For anyone looking to improve their Spanish (and who already has some foundation), I cannot recommend podcasts enough. It was 100% what helped me turn my first big corner. I started with the Duolingo Podcast, reading the transcripts karaoke style as I listened. Little by little, I weaned myself off the text until I could understand full episodes just by listening. Next, I moved onto How to Spanish Podcast which is intermediate level/educational, and finally to Mextalki (my favorite!) hosted by two guys who crack beers at the beginning of each episode and bullshit about random topics for an hour — it’s full of of funny slang and is the “real” way Mexicans speak, and it’s always highly entertaining.

2. I was so hung up on trying to trill my ‘RRs’ that I didn’t realize until somewhat recently that how I pronounce the letter ‘D’ has been setting off gringo noob alarm bells. My accent is decidedly NOT cute.