I’ve spent the last 6 months using the bit of Spanish I do know. We are all working towards learning the language and have a few leads on local lessons to supplement what we are doing ourselves.
Over the last few days I have met a large portion of expats within the Lake Arenal community. The majority of the people we have met are either originally from the US or Canada with a few from other locals. What I observed today was they appear to prefer their English greeting to the Spanish.
Whenever I have said ‘Hola’ the response is ‘Hello’. When I say ‘Gracias’ they look at me and then say ‘you’re welcome’. There is a portion of the group who do speak the local language – and when they are talking with a Tico (Costa Rican native) they speak Spanish.
Canada has two official languages but my exposure to the French speaking portion was never significant. Since I’ve never been in a situation of living with two languages, I had just assumed it would be similar to what we were doing. You know a word – you use it all the time. If you did not, then you would revert back to English. I realized I had not considered it would be Spanish for one situation and English for another.
I’m thinking it may be considered to be a welcome space to be with people speaking your mother tongue. I will continue to observe this pattern and see how this progresses as Walter, Gregory and I learn more Spanish.
