I’ve been a British digital nomad in Argentina for 18 months and attend regular language lessons here – yet my Spanish remains dismal. I refuse to be that Brit abroad who expects people to just speak English, so I try hard. But because my generation (X) was short-changed by how modern languages were taught, hard is not always enough.
Here’s what I sound like to Argentinians – based on recent real events in a Buenos Aires restaurant…
Me: Good morning waitress! Passing a pleasant evening?
Waiter: Erm, yes? The menu is on the QR code sir.
Me: Thank you, but I’d like to eat your printed menu please?
Waiter: I’ll be right back.
Me: You’re welcome!
Waiter: What can I get you?
Me: I want steak and I want that now, sorry, thank you many times and please!
Waiter: How would you like that cooked?
Me: I am size medium but only just medium, OK? I am leaking blood. You cow. Sorry! Correct?
Waiter: Anything else?
Me: I am enough. I am everything.
Waiter: Salt? Pepper?
Me: Ohhhhh! Many times sorry! I eat all the time! So no! Absolute cow. I literally am mayonnaise. Sorry about that. I’m English!
Waiter: Here you go sir. Your steak.
Me: Thank you. Delicious you were! What a cow. Blood!
There’d have been no need for this humiliating scene, had Britain’s education system not failed digital nomads like me. French has long been the default go-to modern language in schools. For a while, it served me well.
For three summers in my early 20s, I worked in Nice, illegally selling flashing magnetic badges to exasperated French parents nagged by their spoilt kids. After those summers, though, I craved new countries and cultures. Spanish would have made much more sense for me to learn while my brain was supple enough to retain muscle memory.
From a utilitarian perspective, it’s high time we swapped French for Spanish as the main modern foreign language taught in Britain’s schools. It will set students up for life, yet we’re still teaching it to students in lower numbers than French.
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Spanish is the second most-spoken first language in the world, with 486 million speakers. French is 20th, with just 74 million speakers. An entire continent (bar Brazil) speaks Spanish. If someone had told me I could remote-work my way across Latin America by learning Spanish early, I’d have had an exciting incentive to immerse myself in notoriously difficult grammar.
French is offered in around 75% of primary schools, with Spanish in just 25%. In 2010, there were 160,000 French GCSE entries, yet fewer than half of that in Spanish (58,000). The good news is, the gap is closing: in 2023, 125,000 students did French GCSE and 120,000 chose Spanish.
It’s a trend we should rapidly accelerate; the majority of schools still default to French. By doing so, they’re living in a past that holds on to France’s proximity and erstwhile nobility.
Unlike me, my cousin’s daughter, 17, passed her 11-plus and attends one of Kent’s prestigious grammar schools. Yet, she tells me, of the three available languages (French, German, Spanish), her class was randomly assigned French and German. “I chose French instead of Spanish at GCSE rather than starting a completely new language for those two years,” she says.
Of course, there are excellent reasons to speak French; it is (along with English) the language of the Olympics, of the UN, and, most crucially, Céline Dion’s mother tongue.
Yet many emerging, affordable, digital nomad hubs and communities are here in South America. Buenos Aires recently became expensive, so I can pivot my paltry Spanish linguistic “skills” to my next destination: Medellín, Colombia. From a business, cultural and travel perspective, Spanish is infinitely more useful than French to Brits now.
Growing up, the same was true. Working-class families like mine holiday in Benidorm or Lanzarote, not the ski slopes of France, the beaches of Cannes or the expensive streets of Paris.
We’re more likely to become holiday reps in Magaluf than ski instructors in the French Alps or racing drivers in Monaco. Especially in the post-Brexit world whereby European jobs may be more seasonal, befitting a 90-day cap.
My digital nomad working stint in my 40s compensates for the fact that I had neither the dosh nor the encouragement to take a gap year. I won the languages cup at school for best French A-level result 24 years ago. How I wish that was for Spanish (not even offered). It would’ve been a life-changing headstart.
I’ve transformed from the hand-raised student to the begrudging one, dodging lessons I’m paying for. It’s never too late to learn. But I sadly no longer possess the innate gift or flair I enviously watch polyglots exhibit. With languages, most agree: you’ve got to get in early.
And so we should. If we really want to prepare our kids for the future, we’d teach them to be citizens of the world with at least two languages, but let’s be real: Britain’s modern language learning culture has long trailed European countries’ healthier linguistic attitudes.
Encouragingly, Vicky Gough at the British Council told me that Spanish is now the most popular A-level language. “Evolving lifestyles are reshaping the landscape,” she said. “But this shift is happening against a wider language-learning crisis – modern foreign-language uptake has more than halved in recent years.”
Brexit isolated us enough in the world; let’s give the next generation the best possible opportunity. And that means learning Spanish.
Gary Nunn is the author of The Psychic Tests (2021)
