I'm trying to learn some Spanish, but I think I probably lack the discipline to get fluent. I'm watching youtube videos and learning the basic words and sentences.

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(05-17-2024, 07:28 PM)mikesez Wrote: I was the star student in my all gringo high school Spanish class.  My Spanish is on the level of, say, Rick Scott or Bush 43.  My vocab isn't great, but I know one word for pretty much everything you'd want to talk about and I know all the tenses and moods.  I probably sound like a fifth grader. I understand most of what's on the radio or TV, but I can't really follow slang conversations between natives from the same country.  My wife's grandmother had a middle school level education from Cuba and we couldn't understand each other.  But I have no problem with her younger relatives.  They pick up on my gringo accented slang-free Spanish quickly and return the favor.

Isn't Cuban Spanish different from Castillian Spanish?  Back when I was in business, we were trying to make our database auto-translate itself by writing our own Spanish translation program.  We had some native Spanish speakers working for us and they told us there are many different types of Spanish.

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