How prevalent is English in Andalucia

I just wrapped up six days in Andalusia (Granada, Córdoba and Sevilla) and I can say that most people in Andalusia, at least in the cities I visited, speak very little English.

Those cities are arguably the most touristy places in Andalusia other than Malaga and the South Coast. If you go to smaller towns like the pueblos blancos, Tarifa, Cadiz or Jerez, I assume there is even less English spoken.

If you speak even a little Spanish, like when ordering food or asking for directions, I found locals to be extremely helpful. My Spanish is primitive at best, and I never had any problems understanding them (or vice versus).

Andalusia is a really lovely part of the world. I’m already dreaming of returning for an Andalusia-only trip (I spent my first three nights in Barcelona).

Hi nathanboley8

thanks that is exactly what I am looking for the less English the better as I am traveling two weeks down there after December 26 reviving my Spanish language skills; I've been to Barcelona Madrid, San Sebastian, Bilbao, Toledo, and Segovia all north so far

I think there was a discussion recently about how much harder it is to learn a language at an older age. I can really attest to that. I'm a reasonably smart person with a master degree, and I got to say I'm having a heck of a time with Spanish. I've been listening to CDs in the car and doing Duolingo for about six months, and I don't think I'm much beyond "Necisito cafe con leche, por favor", "vaso de agua", "donde esta el bano", "una mesa para dos personas" and "botello de vino tinto". The important stuff, I guess. So the comments about English in Andalusia have me a bit rattled. Hopefully, if I just try, they will take pity and help. My husband just wants to make sure he never gets tripe on a plate again!

Anyway, in France, I quickly learned that it is important to say "Bonjour Madame", when entering any establishment. I figure the same is probably a good idea in Spain. But does one say "Senora" or "Senorita"? How would one know? Or is it ok to just say Buenas dias? What can I expect at train stations when purchasing tickets?

Jules, as you know Spain is not a traditional country per se, but an amalgam of different cultures -at odds with each other I shall add. Each one has its own language and although Spanish is "known" all over, I've always found best to use "the language of the land" wherever I go since local native speakers do appreciate one making the effort. So learning "good morning" in the different languages, imho, it's the way to go.

So.... Bon dia for Catalonia, Valencia and Balearic Islands, Egun on in Euskalherria (Basque Country), Bos días in Galicia... and Buenos dias for the rest. No need really to add anything else, this way you don't risk saying anything incorrectly.

Obviously, depending on the time of the day, you'd use good morning, good afternoon, etc but since you'll be picked up as a non-native anyway, one can simplify and stick to saying good morning even if it's not in the morning... the intent (of being polite) it's what people will take into account.

An alternative is to use the universal and colloquial "hola", which is the same in Catalan, Spanish, Galician, Portuguese... yet not in Basque language, which is "kaixo", pronounced "kay-sho". Note though "hola" it's considered to be more direct than "good morning".

PS. At the train station, you can expect staff "mumbling" English at least... you can also expect ATMs serving you in half a dozen languages :)

My Spanish is limited but even when I've got it right quite often the reply is spoken so fast that I have trouble understanding it. That being said I've had no trouble with English being spoken or getting by with a mixture of Spanish and gesticulation throughout my many travels through Andalucia.

Most of the people that I met in Barcelona spoke either Catalan or English to me.

I don’t speak a lick of Catalan, but Barcelona is an international destination that receives a lot of domestic and foreign tourists, most of whom do not speak any Catalan. The people who did open conversations with me in Catalan (thus receiving a blank stare or pointless stammering from myself) would ask if I preferred Castilian or English. We all got along just fine, in the end.

Either way, there were A LOT more English speakers in Barcelona than even the most touristy spot I visited in Andalusia. In particular, Cordoba seemed highly Castilian, with very few English speakers around. I can only imagine how few English speakers there are in the more rural, less touristy parts of Andalusia.

We were in Sevilla and Granada for 10 nights last spring. You will have plenty of opportunities to use your Spanish skills!

I speak it fairly well (actually, since I learned in school, I read/write very well and it all falls apart when I open my mouth, but I get by). My then-7th grade daughter had had just a few months of Spanish I when we took our trip. We used our Spanish everywhere, and found that, while a few people spoke English, many did not, and it worked better just speaking in Spanish. Everyone we spoke with was patient with our efforts, and my daughter received lots of compliments to boost her confidence.

As an example, our group of 5 needed 2 taxis anytime we needed a car. None of the taxi drivers spoke English, so we would put myself in one car and her in the other (with my zero-Spanish husband) so we could have at least some communication if things went wrong.

She was terrified going into the first ride.... but thrilled getting out. Her first comment was “he was SO nice to me!!” And this was a ride where the driver couldn’t find the apartment, so it got complicated.

Absolutely every single person we interacted with in Spanish was so appreciative of our efforts, even when we butchered our vocab and grammar. The super wonderful lady from whom I purchased our flamenco tickets patiently held up her end of the conversation (even though I’m sure she spoke flawless English), complimented me on my Spanish skills (very kind of her!), and then gently corrected a word that I had repeatedly used incorrectly.

My son, who is special needs and knows only “hola,” “adios,” and “gracias,” was high-fived by an awful lot of waitstaff. He had a prolonged conversation in one taxicab with a driver who spoke no English (my daughter translated) about his Mickey Mouse T-shirt. Everyone in the cab had a blast.

These were all some of our favorite memories of our trip. So go ahead and brush off your Spanish — no need to speak English at all. I’m sure you’ll have the same experiences we had, where people were so helpful and appreciative of our efforts to speak their language.

And you can come home and dream in Spanish like I did for weeks afterward — I am so fluent in my sleep! 😳

As an aside, I think that accents are a very interesting part of the Castilian/Spanish dynamic. One can really tell where people are from in Spain, and other places in the Hispanophone world, from their accents in our lingua franca, Castellano. For example, I have found that in some parts of Andalucía it takes me a bit more effort in understanding what people are saying, due to a heavy Andalucían accent in the smaller towns and villages.

I think that it's really cool that there is such diversity in Spanish accents, not only in Spain but in Latin America too. Another example, the Chicano/Mexican accent of Spanish I hear now and again in Los Angeles sounds almost like another language to me. I have to really strain to understand what they are saying, and I grew up with the language! lol. For me, it is very interesting how Chicano Spanish periodically inserts English words too, like a blending of the two cultures.

For fast Spanish speakers, "Habla despacio, por favor". See, I've been working on that as well as, "No hablo muy bien espanol".

I did learn some "polite" Catalan phrases prior to my time in Catalunya. I found it more difficult than Spanish. Where I live and where my kids went to school does have a large number of Spanish speaking families. So I have been exposed more to Spanish and actually, German, because my kids all can speak German pretty well from high school and some college German. But French sounds just really foreign to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, but there does seem to be some French influence in the Catalan language. I do remember it was something like "sis plau" instead of "por favor"

Carlos, you are so right about the accents!

I learned basic Spanish in high school from American teachers, but then in college took extensive literature courses from a limited pool of professors. They were from Madrid, Barcelona (speaking Castilian Spanish with a Barcelona accent), and Cuba. I also at that time worked as a waitress in restaurant with Mexican bus boys from Chicago (I went to college in northern Indiana). I actually leaned to open my mouth and speak “familiar” Spanish from the bus boys.

So I can hear Castilian, Cuban and Mexican Spanish really well, and the Mexican accent is easiest for me. But when my Puerto Rican friend speaks, it is complete gibberish.

I found Andalusian Spanish to be really easy, and I’ve heard that that region tends to have more of a “flat” intonation similar to Central America.

I bet there’s a lot of history lessons in all of this!

@DebVT - an interesting story, I guess it shows how multifaceted Spanish accents can be just in the United States.

Your observation that Andalucían Spanish sounds similar to Central American Spanish is spot on too. Due to massive emigration from Andalucía to the Viceroyalty of New Spain, many Central American Spanish dialects share some fundamental characteristics with Andalucían Spanish, such as the use of ustedes instead of vosotros, for the second person plural.

Also obligatory pronunciation PSA: It always gets me when people learn that I am from Barcelona and they say "don't you mean Bar-TH'e-lonah". I have actually been "corrected" on it by many a well-meaning person here in the US. The Catalan pronunciation is actually much easier, no need for a Castillian "lisp", the 'c' is pronounced as an 's' - so "Bar-se-lona" would be the correct Catalan pronunciation.

Actually, my dear fellow Barcelonian, you know very well is more like "bar-sah-lo-nah", with very open 'a' in all cases, ain't it right, LOL!

My experience is that the smaller and/or more remote the town, the fewer people speak English, though teens and 20's usually know at least some English. In Cordoba I stay at a small family-owned hotel. The parents (in their 50's) know no English. We manage everything by signs and the very few Spanish words I know. The father uses google translate when he's at the computer and we get to an impasse. For anything more complicated than walking directions or a restaurant recommendation, I wait for one of the college-age sons, who both speak fluent English. There are lots of British ex-pats in and around the south coast, so English is very prevalent.

I found English not well-known in Sicily even among some younger people, outside the large cities. Rural France is much the same. On the other hand, I didn't find a tiny Greek village where at least some of the older locals spoke fluent English - many have lived abroad for extended periods and returned to Greece when they retire - or are semi-retired.

@Enric - well if we want to get technical then it would be BAR-sə-LOH-nə! :)

And Jules, I meant to add earlier: I totally sympathize with you on learning a language late in life. I’m trying to learn some basic Italian for our trip next summer, and I’m feeling so thick. It’s all good 😊

And don’t sweat the Spanish when you’re there — you can totally get by with a few basic phrases and pointing. Use google translate on the menus to avoid the dreaded tripe (although my family has a policy of not allowing translation tools at restaurants — sometimes you like the weird stuff better if you don’t know what it is until after you’ve eaten it. Lol!!).

As others have stated, in many smaller, less touristy towns, many locals know little if any English. Fortunately, I am conversant in Spanish, so other than some verbs and words I’ve forgotten over the years, I generally don’t have any trouble getting by. If only I knew more Italian, French, and German, I’d be set. If you stay at a Parador, some employees will know some English. The Spanish spoken in Andalucia is a little different than in Madrid and other parts of Spain. Some words are different and they tend to drop or swallow the last syllable of words.

Apologies for including a joke with Carlos above, I just realized others won't "get it".

Catalan, much like other languages, also has "regional accents" and, for example, depending on where you're from, you pronounce vowels a certain way. Thus, those from Barcelona we're accused of pronouncing the 'e' in Barcelona --which is what we in Catalan call a neutral e, which sounds sort like a mix between 'a' and 'e'-- as an 'a' (with a wide open mouth, lol!). So to a non-Catalan native it'd probably sound more like "bar-sAH-lo-nah"

In any case, and this is the important bit, as mentioned by Carlos earlier, the 'c' in Barcelona is pronounced as 's'. We, in Catalan, don't have the Spanish 'c' sound -nor the strong 'j' or 'g' for that matter, which are all a product of the influence of Arabic during the Moor occupation of most of the Iberian Peninsula during 800 years. Catalonia was a sort of "frontier land" between the Moor empire and the Frank empire and didn't have such strong influence so we kept a different "tonality" (or musicality if you want) in our language.

Yes, as Enric pointed out, the area of what is now Catalonia started out as a buffer state called Marca Hispànica, set up by the Frankish Empire. Thus, linguistically, one can find influences from the Franks in Catalan, as the language would evolve from Vulgar Latin during the early middle ages.

P.S. Also, thank you Enric, for aptly explaining our linguistic jests... how about this one "bəɾsəˈlonə" lol :)

@jaimeelsabio, dropping the last syllable of a word?! My gosh, sometimes when I'm working with duolingo, and I compare the written sentence to what they are saying and it seems like they drop entire words or just "smush" words together. I'm wondering if the effort is worth it. I can say a whole lot of phrases but I have difficulty understanding a lot of the replies. I just want my wine and no tripe on my husband's plate (or mine for that matter) ;)

@Carlos.... no em punxis, no em punxis :))

@Jules, think Texan accent but in Spanish, if you catch my drift, LOL!

For those who do like tripe, La Tasqueria in Madrid is very good. The best we've had. Better than in Chinese dim sum, Italian in Florence or in menudo.

@ Michelle, after having had tripe in France, I wonder what can be done to make it taste good, but I believe you. I love the Phil Rosenthal tv shows--I'll have what Phil's Having, and the new one. In the original he eats a tripe sandwhich, street food, in Italy. It appeared that many, including Phil, like it.