GOING abroad and learning another language is really a fun experience that one will surely cherish for a lifetime. If you have been born in Valencia, Spain, please go to other places that speak Catalan or Basque. Studying other dialects in your native country is fun indeed. If you go to other places beyond mainland Spain like the Balearic and the Canary archipelagoes, then it’s heartwarming to learn how the people there speak Spanish. Try to compare whether they have the same passion in speaking Spanish the way it is spoken in the mainland.

Try to read the books indigenous to those islands too. Try to research on whether they have prolific and productive authors. This may well be an experience worth enhancing. Of course, everybody knows that people have their day jobs so it’s nice to go there once in a while like during a weekend or on an extended holiday break. There are a few extended holiday breaks around especially if the holiday falls on a Friday. That was what happened on November 1 and 2, All Saints Day and All Souls Day respectively. Take that opportunity to study in a foreign land.

And by studying, I don’t mean formal studying. I mean studying in an atmosphere of actual learning through immersion. Try to befriend the locals in a particular place. You go to Mexico or Cuba or Puerto Rico, they speak the same Spanish yet they have their own unique vocabularies indigenous in that area. The twangs also differ. Try to study that and have a fun life. Once you have your own capital, how about establishing a language school as your own investment?

But first, you must immerse yourself on whether you want to really be a linguist as a pastime. If you’re on your two-week holiday break, try to spend it in a non-Spanish speaking country like Portugal. Portugal is just around the corner – at the same peninsula where you live, the Iberian Peninsula – yet people there speak another language. Then go beyond the Iberian Peninsula and look at the countries fronting the Mediterranean like Italy and France. More or less, they have the same culture such as yours although France is a little bit more liberated. But try to study the languages in those countries because they are definitely diverse. They may have the same origin – the Roman language – but the French and Italian languages are as different as they are.

French is said to be the most romantic language in the modern era. Try to find out why. Try to find out too by enrolling yourself in a French language school. A French language school may be located anywhere – whether in Nice or in Paris – but they offer the same programs. They want students to maximize their learning of the French language by using state-of-the-art technology such as language tapes and computerized lessons. You will also be paired with language partners so you can both tutor each other. So go out into the world and have fun learning languages.