How much Spanish do you actually need?

There is a short answer to how much Spanish you need: more than you expect, and less than you fear.

Colombia is not a country where English gets you through. In Medellín, English is spoken by hotel receptionists, by young people in Poblado and by part of the tech crowd. Everyone else, meaning the taxi driver, the shop assistant, the building manager, the clerk, the doctor in the emergency room and your neighbour, speaks Spanish and expects nothing else from you.

At the same time it is one of the friendliest language environments I know. Colombians are used to foreigners, they slow down, they repeat, and they praise every sentence you put together. The difference against Spain or Argentina shows on day one.

How much is enough to start

It splits into three levels, each opening a different door:

Fifty words and six sentences. Shopping, a taxi, ordering food, greetings. That is learnable on the flight over and it covers tourism. With less you will manage too, you will just pay more for everything and miss a lot.

Roughly A2. You can deal with a landlord, explain in the pharmacy what hurts, and understand what an official wants from you. This is where life without an interpreter begins, and it is the level worth aiming at before you move.

B1 and up. You stop being a tourist. You talk to people about something other than the weather, and Colombia opens up differently, because the friendliness here runs on talking.

What Colombian Spanish is like

Good news for a beginner: Colombian pronunciation is among the clearest in the Spanish speaking world. Syllables are not swallowed the way they are in the Caribbean, endings survive, and the speed is bearable. Textbook Spanish actually works here.

What will catch you out:

• Usted instead of tú. In Antioquia people use the formal form with friends, children and the dog. It sounds stiff and it is simply how people talk. Using tú is not rude, it just marks you as foreign.
• Diminutives everywhere. Ahorita, tintico, momentico. Not childish, it is politeness.
• Paisa vocabulary. Parce is mate, bacano is great, chévere is good, a la orden you will hear a hundred times a day and it means "at your service". Qué pena apologises for everything.
• Ustedes, not vosotros. The forms drilled into you by European textbooks are never used here.

The most useful sentence of your first week is not a greeting. It is "¿Me lo puede repetir más despacio, por favor?" They will repeat it, and slower, without exception.

How to learn here

A private tutor is the fastest route. In Medellín an hour averages 36,000 pesos, and on tutoring platforms you can find from 15,000. Most tutors give the first hour free, so you can try several people before choosing.

A language school. Intensive courses start around 250 dollars a week, which is an order of magnitude more than private lessons; you are paying for structure and classmates. If you come for a month specifically for the language, you also get a programme and people.

Language exchange (intercambio). Free, and Medellín has plenty: bars and cafés run evenings where you speak Spanish for an hour and English for an hour. It is the best way to lose the fear of speaking and the worst way to learn grammar.

Apps and listening. They work as a side dish, not the main course. The best ratio of use to time is Colombian podcasts and radio while cooking: your ear gets used to the melody long before your mouth starts working.

What to learn before you fly

If I were doing it again, I would focus on this:

1. Numbers and money. Prices are quoted in thousands and fast. Veinticinco mil is 25,000, not 25.
2. Questions, not answers. Dónde, cuánto, cómo, hay. Ask well and you get an answer even without vocabulary.
3. The politeness wrapper. Buenos días, por favor, muchas gracias, qué pena. Without it you are rude here even when you do not mean to be.
4. The menu. Ten words across the three courses solve three meals a day.
5. Emergency sentences. Necesito ayuda, me robaron, llame a una ambulancia. I hope you never use them.

What to avoid

Falling back into English out of habit. Surround yourself with foreigners in Poblado and you leave after a year with the Spanish you arrived with. I know people like that and none of them are happy about it.

Being embarrassed. Nobody cares about a wrong gender on a noun. Silence they do notice.

Translating from your own language in your head. What comes out is a sentence nobody understands. Better to simplify the thought down to what you can actually say.

Leaning on a translation app in a shop. It works, and it kills the conversation. Save it for paperwork and contracts, where it helps and nobody is in a hurry.