Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Looking into moving to Mexico. Could use some advice.

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- - Looking into moving to Mexico. Could use some advice. (https://www.fodors.com/community/mexico-and-central-america/looking-into-moving-to-mexico-could-use-some-advice-1680096/)

That's fantastic he found places to love and was able to adapt well without preparation. Maybe our OP is already living in Mexico! That would be a great end to this story.

In his 2nd post, the OP indicated that for all intents he'd first be visiting as a tourist, as in for 3-6 months. And I've noticed too that on some travel forums in addition to those that just want to pack up and go without visiting, there are posters that are quick to recommend travel to places that they themselves have never even visited. So it's hard to get accurate information.

Quote:

Originally Posted by baldone (Post 17121440)

"As an adult I find that Andean Spanish (eg Peru or Colombia) is easier to understand than Spanish from Spain or Mexican accented Spanish"
I agree. Especially so I think if you studied in a more formal, classroom setting. In my first ever class, the instructor, a Colombiano, asked me a question in Spanish, and I replied ¿mande? as all my Mexican friends would've responded. He quickly rebuked me and said, don't use that word, use 'como'. I asked why and he said "mande" is like how a servant would respond to a superior. That said, at least in Lima, if you ask a taxi driver to take you to a "playa pública" you'll end up in a parking lot.

When I took Spanish at UCLA, a lot of the Chicano (Mexican-American) students did not have as easy a time as the non-native speakers. It was also interesting to me that many of the best writers we had at work were not born in the USA (unless they were English majors), but had grown up in a British colony or in Mexico. They understood grammar and how to construct a paragraph, even if there was a word that could have been replaced with a different one.