Key Takeaways
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Initial Spark: A 2011 trip to the Dominican Republic and daily messaging with a native speaker highlighted the limits of high school Spanish and translation tools.
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The Turning Point: A 2014 trip to Medellín, Colombia, and a humbling experience in a restaurant surrounded by multilingual European travelers sparked a shift in mindset regarding monolingualism.
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Cultural Connection: A personal realization that monolingualism conflicted with the author’s own diverse background (son of Jamaican immigrants, grandson of Cuban-born grandmothers).
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Execution & Strategy: Returned to Atlanta and committed to daily practice using language apps (Rosetta Stone, Duolingo), local meetup groups, and practice with native-speaking friends.
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Professional & Personal ROI: Unlocked seamless travel across Latin America, built international relationships, and created new revenue streams in voiceover by booking dual-language (English/Spanish) projects.
Why did I decide to learn Spanish? As we celebrate Latin American Heritage Month starting today, that question feels more relevant than ever. Like most good stories from my 30’s, this one started with a girl, rather girls. A lot of girls. But there were two Dominican girls in particular. On a trip to the Dominican Republic in 2011, it bothered me that my buddy Mike was the only one who spoke fluent Spanish. I was able to pluck out a few basic sentences based on my recollection of High School Spanish, but it barely scratched the surface of my needs. But a year after that visit, I got a message from a random Dominican girl on Facebook Messenger. It started with “Hola” and got much more complicated from there.
I began this Messenger friendship with Yanis, where we messaged each other every day. Yanis was learning English at that time. She would try to message me in English, but with little success, so she would default back to what she knew best, Spanish. So, I began using Google Translate. Over months of seeing many of the same types of messages, I began to understand through text what she was saying. This was enough for me. But that changed when I met Yanis in person later that year on a second trip to her town. Texting was easy, listening was harder, MUCH HARDER. We spent a day of my few days of vacation together, mostly silent but communicating with more Google Translate.
Having survived that experience, I was fine with my level of Spanish. I didn’t feel like I needed to learn Spanish any more than what I already knew. I came back bragging about how much Spanish I had spoken while on vacation, as now I realize how many travelers do. But like so many ambitious native English-speaking explorers, I really knew almost nothing.
When Learning Spanish Through Travel Gets Real
Fast forward two years, and things were very different. I visited Medellin, Colombia, where no one spoke English. It was very different from the Dominican Republic, where American tourism dominated the economy. In this environment, I struggled. I could communicate a few things, once again based on High School Spanish, but not nearly enough of what I needed. For a large portion of my trip, I was assisted by my “homie” from New York and language app developer, Patrick Jackson. (Patrick developed one of the top-selling apps in the world for people who want to learn Spanish called Learning Spanish Like Crazy)
But Patrick wasn’t with me the entire week. He wasn’t with me in the middle of the night when I ordered “pollo” to be delivered and they delivered pork spare ribs. That night, I was so hungry and experiencing diabetic symptoms that I ate pork for the first time in 17 years. Patrick wasn’t with me when I tried speaking to the Reggae DJ in the club, who I thought might’ve been Jamaican. Turns out that he was Jamaican but moved to Medellin at a young age and forgot how to speak English. And Patrick wasn’t there when I had my eye-opening moment when I finally realized that I had to learn Spanish.
Patrick lives in Medellin, so his life is based there. He had things to do that didn’t include holding my hand throughout this trip. And thank goodness for that, or I would’ve never had this one experience.
The Moment That Changed Everything About Speaking a Second Language
In 2014, I had been traveling for 3 years. I had been to the UK but had not yet visited any non-English-speaking countries in Europe. I had no idea of the European idiomatic dexterity that so many people there were capable of, but I was about to find out. And when I found out, it was embarrassing.
I walked into a restaurant alone to order some food. I realized that there were so many words on the menu that I didn’t know, like “asada” and “frita” so I looked towards only items with pictures. I pointed to a picture to order a menu item but when asked a specific question in Spanish about that item, I was helpless. I did my best to work through it, but the server and I just couldn’t break through the language barrier. Suddenly, a German gentleman entered the restaurant and stood behind me while I struggled to communicate. He asked me in English if I needed help ordering. I accepted, so he ordered my food for me. He ordered his food as well, and we sat down at the table and waited for our food.
At that moment, 3 women entered the restaurant and ordered their food in Spanish. While waiting, the gentleman who helped me order observed the women speaking French. He chimed in on the conversation, speaking to the women in French. He must’ve mentioned where he was from because one of the women, seemingly flirtatiously, said something to him in German. Another man entered the restaurant while this was all happening. He ordered food in Spanish but observed the conversation in German, so he began speaking German to the first man. It turns out that he was from Austria. The first man explained to me that Austrians speak German along with another native language. But the Austrian man also said something to me in English.
It turned out that they all spoke English, Spanish, French, and several of them spoke German as well. Except myself and the cook, everyone in the restaurant was multilingual. I thought to myself, “Why do I only speak one language?” Why do we as Americans, pride ourselves on English alone? For me, in this moment, it was embarrassing and seemed to be a badge of ignorance instead of that of pride. There is no single country on Earth that is more culturally diverse than the US, and I’m from New York, the most culturally diverse city in the country. I myself am the son of Jamaican immigrants and the grandson of two Cuban born grandmothers. I knew that I had to make a change for myself.
How I Finally Committed to Learning Spanish as an Adult
I went back to Atlanta and found a meet-up group for people who wanted to learn Spanish. I started using Rosetta Stone and Duolingo, and enlisted the help of every Spanish-speaking friend I had. I took it seriously and did it every day. Four years later, I still have a lot to improve on when it comes to Spanish. But learning Spanish through travel and daily practice has improved my life greatly. It’s opened me up to new friends abroad, allowed me to travel freely through Latin America, do a handful of voiceover projects in Spanish, and even introduced me to some girls. Because after all, like most good stories from my 30’s, this one had to end with girls.
Speaking Spanish has quietly become an unexpected tool in my voiceover career. Not that I do a ton of Spanish-speaking projects, but thinking in another language has changed the way that I approach voice acting. Over the years, a handful of clients have asked me to voice both the English and Spanish versions of the same project. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens. And every time it does, I approach the Spanish version with equal parts gratitude and hesitation. I’m not a native speaker, and unlike my English voiceover work, I have never taken a single Spanish voice acting class. There is also that feeling of imposter syndrome. The quiet voice that says a native Spanish speaker could deliver that script with more authenticity that I simply cannot. But I do it anyway, because the work is there and the language I spent years building has real professional value. It reminds me that learning Spanish through travel and daily practice was never just a personal journey. It became part of my life and how I interpret everything, including voiceover.
