Studying Spanish in Barcelona- yay or nay?

tradhead

¡Hola!

I'm currently in 2nd year of an Applied Languages degree, and it's a compulsory part of the course to go abroad for a year of college, so I'm planning on going to Spain. Barcelona is one of my few options, and it sounds fantastic but I'm worried about how much Spanish I'll actually learn- I've heard that a lot of people speak English there, if not Catálan, and my Spanish really needs a lot of improvement so I want to be totally immersed in the language for the year.

Does anyone have any opinions on whether this would be a problem?

Thanks in advance.

tradhead

Anybody??:(

UngratefulWhelp

Depends who you surround yourself with. There are Spanish speakers from other parts of the country living there, but if you hang out with Catalans, they'll not speak much of it (out of choice, not out of lack of ability).

mike kelly

Barcelona is full of english speaking foreigners. Your university course may be in catalan, so those are two reasons to prefer Madrid (or any other Spanish city)

languagenerd

They are pretty proud of being Catalan speakers there, so sometimes you will find that you ask in Spanish and they answer you in English. That said, I've just come back from a trip there (not studying, just visiting) and found that this time (2 years into a degree) they were more willing to talk to me in Spanish than last time (straight after the Leaving Cert) so maybe my Spanish was just a bit crap then :rolleyes:

I know a girl currently on Erasmus there and some of her lectures are in Catalan :S

But it is a beautiful city and everyone there knows & understands Spanish. Good luck either way!

ellefolk

I'm Spanish myself and I can certify all what is said above. If you really wanna learn Spanish, the best way of doing it is by going to a small city with a neutral accent; as it would be easier for you to understand it and adapt it to your speaking skills. In Catalunya; most of the universities teach in Catalan, even the private ones, all the signs, information posts, newspapers, entertainment and everything is in Catalan. You'd tend then to hang out with foreigners who would mainly speak English or an incorrect Spanish; therefore you'll start adapting to your Spanish the linguistic mistakes that they make.
Cities such Salamanca, Leon, Zaragoza are ideal for learning Spanish. Specially the first one which is characterised by being one of the most popular cities among the university students.

number10a

What ellefolk said ^^^^. I did my Erasmus in Barcelona and I'd really recommend somewhere else if you're trying to improve your Spanish. Catalan is getting stronger and stronger every year - and rightly so really. But some people just take it too far. If you do end up going to BCN for Erasmus and your university is the UB, 75% of the classes will be in Catalan (all fine there). I chose my subjects really carefully to try and have most classes in Spanish. And even though there are so many classes on offer in Catalan you still have students with nationalist sentiments in the class translating into Catalan out loud as a form of protest. So, so distracting. They were nearly always there and no one would say anything to them. We used to call them the language Nazis.

Besides that, Barcelona is an amazing city! It has absolutely everything you could ever want and more. But, for learning Spanish, head somewhere else. Zaragoza is such a cool city and the people are some of the nicest I have ever met. Burgos is good too as is Salamanca. You've loads of choice. And these cities are smaller too, so much more chance to get to know the locals.