Keith Blakemore Noble [00:00:14]:
You’re listening to the Keith Blakemore-Noble Radio Show. Interesting chats with interesting people about interesting things and no adverts. Here’s your host, Keith Blakemore-Noble. Hello. Hello. Welcome back. Welcome back, dear viewer, dear listener. Welcome to another episode.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:00:37]:
I’ve got a cracking guest for this episode. My guest was born in The UK but grew up in Argentina, and as a result, is fluent in both English and Spanish. They moved back to The UK at the age of 19 up to Lancashire at the age of 21, where they live to this day. Now over the years, the rest of their family has moved back to The UK. So now their parents live just around the corner, and their siblings live in London and Kent. Married with no kids, they do have a dog. My guest loves driving and loves doing triathlons. Their teen babysitting money paid for a typing course, which kept them employed for most of their life, starting their first business at the age of 18, selling the cakes that mom bakes.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:01:32]:
Don’t you just love fresh homemade cakes? And they worked in a variety of roles over the years, mainly in admin and project management. And then when lockdown hit us all, five can you believe it’s five years ago? When lockdown hit us, they started doing online Spanish lessons, mainly to hear their French were being bored. That, however, turned into a business. Now my guest focuses mainly on teaching Spanish, but is also able to help out if people need, a letter sending in Spanish or a medical appointment while on holiday, any of that sort of thing. And to date, they’ve also translated two books from English into Spanish. That is my fantastic guest, today. My guest is Sylvia Poll from Spanish the Fun Way. Hey, Sylvia.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:02:19]:
Are you there?

Sylvia Poll [00:02:21]:
I am. Yes.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:02:22]:
Did you enjoy hearing about yourself, reminding yourself who you are and what you’re doing?

Sylvia Poll [00:02:27]:
Yeah. I just need to make one tiny little correction. I think maybe I made a typo. I actually started my first business at 15, not 18.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:02:36]:
Oh, my apologies. My apologies. That’s even more impressive.

Sylvia Poll [00:02:40]:
Even more impressive. The age of 18, I’d actually transferred that business to my sister, and I’d gone off into the world of employment.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:02:48]:
So by the age of 18, you’d started a business, and you had built a successful business and sold it on to somebody else. Yes. Blimey. Age of 18, I was just getting ready to leave school. Blimey. Oh, I feel I I feel, so, so inadequate in comparison. Only kidding. So we’ve heard your bio, Sylvia.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:03:13]:
We’ve heard your bio. But I do have to ask, who is Sylvia? Who’s Sylvia Poll, the lady behind this all?

Sylvia Poll [00:03:22]:
Well, some people, think of me as the mad woman that decided to do a triathlon when she was turning 50, and to date, I’ve done 11. And the next one’s in just over seven weeks. I’m also mad dog woman. Although I only have one dog, so I think that’s vastly overrated. I’m also professional auntie as it were, although I don’t get paid other than in hugs and kisses, which are the best currency. My nieces and nephews go from nearly the in their forties down to the age of just one. And, they go through all sorts of things, and they know that they can always come to their auntie Sylvia for letting off steam, bubble bath takeaways, and, you know, if they want to crash over because parents know nothing. Right? We’ve all been through that phase in life where you need somebody other than your mom because your mom knows nothing.

Sylvia Poll [00:04:27]:
And then you get into your mid twenties and you realise, well, maybe your mom knew a thing or two, which is why she set you up with an auntie too.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:04:34]:
Yes. Yes. Yes. No. That’s

Sylvia Poll [00:04:41]:
And, of course, Spanish. I I I love it when people get it when they come back from holiday and say, you know, I got myself into a sticky situation. I managed to talk my way out of it because I could speak Spanish. Or I got complimented on my pronunciation. I ordered a bottle of wine. You know? Right. It breaks down barriers. I hate the fact that so many people live in their little silos, and they don’t communicate with others.

Sylvia Poll [00:05:13]:
And as a species, we’re needed to distrust what’s different because different is strange, unknown, might be dangerous. So that genetically, you know, we are programmed to distrust those that are different. And language is one of the things that makes us different. It separates us. And out of suspicion and that weariness, which it, as I say, is natural, it’s instinctive, that’s where disagreements happen. That’s where conflicts arise. So my mission is to reduce that conflict, to bridge that gap because you might think something is weird and different. But if you ask them why do you do that, there’ll be usually a rational explanation.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:06:05]:
Yeah. Yeah. No. I I love that. I love that. You’re so right. As a species, we have, engineered or evolved or however you want to put it to distrust things which are different from us. And it comes from, well, thousands, tens of thousands of generations ago where if something was different, it probably was a threat.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:06:28]:
And most trying to be the each will kill you or worse. Obviously, nowadays, that’s not the case, but we still have all that old programming. The, the mind takes a the brain takes a lot longer to, to evolve than society does. So you’re absolutely right. I love that your mission is to reduce conflict by helping people speak and be understood.

Sylvia Poll [00:06:50]:
Yeah.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:06:51]:
Yeah. So

Sylvia Poll [00:06:54]:
Go on. Go on. One of my testimonial is, somebody who we both know who ended up in a bit of a a dangerous situation, in, in Mexico, actually. And, she said to me she actually said, you saved my life. I think that’s possibly over egging it slightly, but, certainly, she was able to talk herself out of a dangerous situation, because she she the the first thing I teach people say, I’m sorry. I don’t speak a lot of Spanish. And then you use what Spanish you have learned to get yourself out. And when you say that, you’re already bridging the gap.

Sylvia Poll [00:07:36]:
You’re showing that you’ve made an effort to communicate in the other person’s language.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:07:41]:
Absolutely. You’re right. I think that’s a key. I know, Brits abroad get a very poor reputation because, of the minority who they think the way they speak a foreign language is just speaks speak English, but shout it slowly. But when people don’t expect everyone to be fluent in every language, but you’re right. When if you’re abroad, if you make an effort, make an attempt, at least show that you’re willing to attempt to speak some of the language. It goes a long, long way, doesn’t it? Yeah. Yeah.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:08:16]:
And I remember, it’s not Spanish. It’s French. Because I I didn’t study Spanish. I studied French at school. But I know, France has a reputation for being very aloof, and they they won’t speak to you. I would be now at Paris Two or three times, and with just my school boyfriend, so not massively fluent in it, but enough to get by. And I always found you’d start speaking French to them, show that you were making the effort. And, yeah, they were always happy to help.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:08:48]:
Usually, frustratingly, usually, they’d always end up speaking English back to you more fluently than, than a lot of people do. So it’s like, I wanna practice my French, and you’re just speaking English to me. Fuck. It’s because you make the effort, and people appreciate that. You’re a guest in their country. You’re attempting to. You’re making the effort, so they’ll do that bit more to help. And I’m assuming it’s the same in, Spanish speaking nations as well.

Sylvia Poll [00:09:14]:
Absolutely. People always feel comfortable in their own home. So if you’re making them feel comfortable by attempting to communicate in their home language, you’re winning already. Even if it’s just a good morning or a thank you to the person who comes and cleans your room in a hotel.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:09:34]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Sylvia Poll [00:09:34]:
That’s My husband’s been is shocking, but he’ll always learn please and thank you.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:09:42]:
Yeah.

Sylvia Poll [00:09:44]:
It it works. People smile, and they go, oh.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:09:49]:
That’s just brought back. I mean, when I went on holiday to Spain, and I’m afraid I speak almost no Spanish at all. But, made a point of saying hola to the, to the lady who was who was cleaning the bedrooms. And I asked, oh, so how do you say good morning? How do you say good evening? How do you say thank you? And, said those things. She knew I couldn’t speak Spanish, but we greeted each other every morning and, yeah, big smile on her face. Sure the room got, a little bit better cleaned than, than friends’ room did as well, Lincoln, looking back on it. Right? It makes such a difference. So that that touched on or that brings us to one of the things that I wanted to really explore in today’s episode.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:10:29]:
You have touched on it, a little bit already. But that is the whole, the benefits of learning, a second language. Now I know, amongst, some quarters, there is the perception that, everybody speaks English. Why do I need to learn another language? But I know there are and you’ve touched on some of these already. But what are the benefits of taking the taking the trouble to learn a second language?

Sylvia Poll [00:10:56]:
So the the the most obvious one is the benefit of having a better holiday or a better experience when you’re traveling, whether it’s for a pleasure or business, finding your way, being able to ask for directions, all of that sort of stuff. But there’s also additional benefits, which we’re only just now starting to uncover. It’s been shown that if you learn a second language, you develop more connections between your left and right brain hemisphere. So then if things vocal, dementia, that sort of thing. And it’s been shown that things like, speaking more than one language, doing crosswords, Sudoku, those sort of things, brain exercises. We work very hard to keep our bodies fit, but our brain also needs to be fit. And, it’s quite remarkable when somebody recovers from something like a stroke where it affects speech. Quite often, if they speak more than one language, that recovery can be faster because your brain is more agile.

Sylvia Poll [00:12:06]:
So it has untold benefits. Learning a second language has also been shown to make it easier to then learn a third language or more languages. When we were growing up, English and Spanish was sort of our base Noble. We learned those from the cradle, literally. So then when other people were starting to learn a second language, we were similar for us. It was a third language. So I chose just French. My brother chose Portuguese, and he found it really easy to learn, not because of the similarities with Spanish, because some of the differences can really trip you up.

Sylvia Poll [00:12:46]:
But because you already had the idea of learning a language structure that how different languages do sometimes have different structures, and it it’s not a foreign world or as foreign as it it would be if you if you spoke one language, whatever that one language is.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:13:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So by learning a a second language, as you say, it, helps us to exercise the brain, creates connections that just wouldn’t wouldn’t otherwise exist. But that’s interesting that you, the, fact that learning a second language makes it that much easier to then go on to learn a third or even a fourth language. Yes. Because you’ve already taught your brain that, hey. This is how we learn language so it knows how to learn language so it becomes easier to then learn other ones.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:13:40]:
That’s interesting. So you hear of these people who can speak multiple languages. It is impressive, It’s not necessarily as difficult as it might as it might first seem.

Sylvia Poll [00:13:51]:
Yeah. I I remember growing up, one of my dad’s friends, he was Greek Orthodox by ethnic origin. He, was growing up in Argentina, so he spoke Greek. He spoke Spanish. He also spoke English because that was the, commercial lingua franca, the common language. He also saw in French and Portuguese, and we were all like, oh my goodness. You know, he must have the brain the size of a house. And he was like, I will well, actually, no.

Sylvia Poll [00:14:23]:
Growing up, mommy in Greek, I spoke to daddy in English, but the nanny actually spoke French. And, of course, in school, it was Spanish. So he just learned that different people spoke differently. A bit like you might address a policeman in the polite form, and you might address your mom and daddy more familiarly. And with your mates, you might use a few swear words, but you wouldn’t dream of using swear words with your parents. We already know that different people speak differently. But with him, it was just a whole different language. But when you learn it from being so little, it’s just natural.

Sylvia Poll [00:14:59]:
Yeah. It may be very interesting when kids grow up bilingual because they mash everything together. But, again, if you know that child well, it’s not a problem.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:15:14]:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a a fair point. A fair point. Yeah. You’re right. I I guess in a way, many of us already kinda use a second language in maybe in our jobs where we it’s all sorts of technical term technical jargon. Yeah.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:15:27]:
Or maybe in hobbies where you have lots of technical terms. So, yeah, I guess, it’s not that big a stretch to learning a different language. You mentioned how, how easy it is, especially for the person, an example, who they grew up. I mean, and you grew up bilingual pretty much from a very, very early age. And, your friend, they spoke, multiple different languages because that’s how they were brought up in the in the household. Is it easier for us to learn languages from a young age? Is it or I guess the other way to put it is the later we leave it in life, does it does it get, much, much harder? Does it become just to reach a point in life where it’s like, you know what? I’m too old to learn another language now.

Sylvia Poll [00:16:12]:
So I would say you’re never too old. To date, my oldest, learner was 82 at the time when I was teaching her. Sadly, she has now passed, but that was quite a few years ago. And, she was remarkable, but she was interested. I would say being interested in learning, wanting to learn is the biggest, requirement. I I also I have taught young children, four, five years old. I had one, young girl, and, I do all my stuff on Zoom, as you know. Yeah.

Sylvia Poll [00:16:53]:
And she and her mom came on the Zoom, and her mom was really keen to to get her to speak Spanish because they were going on holiday to South America and, you know, the little one had to be ready to speak. And the child had no interest. She didn’t see the benefit. She was bored. And it was like, I’m not gonna say I can teach this child Spanish because she doesn’t want to.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:17:20]:
Yeah.

Sylvia Poll [00:17:22]:
On the other hand, I have talked to a five year old who really wanted to because his granny lived in Spain and only spoke Spanish. He had a reason to learn the language. Yes. And he was amazing. I mean, at that age, the brain is like a sponge. It just soaks everything up. And he wasn’t afraid of being embarrassed, which can hamper a lot of adults. You know, when people say to me, I can’t speak Spanish until I’ve had a glass of wine.

Sylvia Poll [00:17:51]:
You can speak Spanish. Your brain’s getting out of the way. You know? You need to speak to somebody who deals with brain blocks and stuff. You know? If only I knew somebody who’d had that sort of skill. But it is more of a British thing to be embarrassed about that, but it is also a common theme, across humanity that we don’t want to make fools of ourselves. We don’t want to be embarrassed.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:18:21]:
Very true. Very true.

Sylvia Poll [00:18:23]:
You know? What if somebody thinks we can’t do it?

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:18:27]:
Well, what if they appreciate the fact that we are trying to do it?

Sylvia Poll [00:18:31]:
Yeah. My brother had for for many years while his kids were growing up, had this poster that you saw as you walked down the stairs. It faced you every morning, and it said, dude, sucking at something is the first step to being kind of good at it.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:18:46]:
Yeah. You can’t believe it. You better than that. Yeah.

Sylvia Poll [00:18:49]:
That’s true for everything in life. Right? Yeah. The first day I tried running, I mean, I used Couch to five k, but I sucked at it. Oh, yeah. It’s still not my favourite way to go around. Give me a bike any day. Yeah. But, you know, I I can do it.

Sylvia Poll [00:19:10]:
Yeah.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:19:11]:
That’s brought to mind a quote a conversation. I can’t remember the person it was. It was some famous person who’s no longer with us. But they were having a chat with someone about the hobby, and the person said, yeah. I like doing this, but I’m not very good at it. And the person said, you know, I don’t think being good at it is the point of doing these things. I think the point of doing them is to be rubbish at it, but to enjoy it. Yeah.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:19:37]:
And, Yeah. That’s right. Whenever we start anything, we always suck at it to start. Even walking, we were absolutely rubbish at walking. And now look at it. We do it without even thinking.

Sylvia Poll [00:19:52]:
Exactly. I mean, my friend’s little girl, I’m seeing all of that. Her little one, for ages, she wasn’t walking, wasn’t walking, wasn’t walking. Now she’s trying to run. Like, two months ago, she couldn’t go beyond crawling. But and the same with her talking. You know? She wasn’t saying a word. Now it’s mommy, daddy, and no.

Sylvia Poll [00:20:13]:
Of course.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:20:17]:
I do guess one advantage, younger kids tend to have over us oldies is, they haven’t really grow haven’t really, developed the concept that they might not be able to do something.

Sylvia Poll [00:20:31]:
Yeah.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:20:32]:
They go on.

Sylvia Poll [00:20:36]:
It it’s something that, for example, if a child is, what they call a late talker, they don’t talk till they’re a little bit older. Quite often, they’ll skip the baby talk stage. Yeah. And in a way, that baby talk stage is essential for getting things wrong and saying helicopter you instead of helicopter because the PT is a difficult, sound to make. But it’s one of my nephews particularly, and this is part true for all kids, but we are he would say words in his sleep. He wouldn’t say them until his brain knew that he could say it right. So his mom knew what new words he was gonna come out with three days later by listening to him sleeping. And in a way, that that’s what we do when if we learn language with an app.

Sylvia Poll [00:21:34]:
Mhmm. We won’t say things. And then I was talking to some, of my learners, a couple, and they’ve just been on holiday. They’d have three left for. They went, I said, so did you try out your Spanish? They were like, we bottled it. So why did you bottle it? Well, we didn’t want to get it wrong. So what’s the worst that could have happened? Would they have said, get out of my restaurant because you’re not fit to order the wine? Oh, they’d have said, well, actually, say it like that. Or they might have gone, oh, we’ll talk English.

Sylvia Poll [00:22:01]:
Don’t worry. Or, you know, you wouldn’t have been laughed out of court. Yeah. But as adults, we put that pressure on ourselves.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:22:12]:
We do, don’t we? Yeah.

Sylvia Poll [00:22:13]:
We’ve got to get it right. Yeah. And quite often, if it’s nearly right, you know, people say, oh, particularly with Spanish where you’ve got masculine and feminine and everything has to be masculine or feminine in in the grammar. What if I get it wrong? What if I say the verb wrong? I say the we form and it’s the me form. It doesn’t actually matter that much. If somebody comes to you in English speaking English and they get things slightly wrong, you don’t laugh at them. Well, if you do, you’re not my kind of people. But, you know, you would generally try to help them or you just ignore it and carry on the conversation, you know, depending on how well what do you think? Yeah.

Sylvia Poll [00:22:59]:
Yeah. You you’d still understand them, you know.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:23:03]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, that’s how difficult think about regional dialects In English, there’s so many different real regional dialects. Some of them with very different syntaxes and different ways of speaking. We can still understand each other. Right. Yeah.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:23:21]:
You mentioned apps. I wanted to ask, what’s the difference between learning from, from a human, such as yourself in in lessons, and learning from an app? Because we know there’s a lot of these apps around. There’s some very popular ones where they encourage learning streaks and all these sorts of things. They encourage you to share your streak, which is a great way of marketing their app.

Sylvia Poll [00:23:43]:
Of course. What’s the

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:23:44]:
difference yeah. What’s the difference between learning from a human and learning from an app?

Sylvia Poll [00:23:49]:
So I always say learning from a human is like you know, when you go down to the gym and you’re not quite sure what’s happening or what that machine what that machine use I mean, people make those and TikToks about people wrong rather than showing them, which would be the kind thing to do. If you go down to the gym and you’re all at sea with all this equipment, you need a PT. It’s all very well once you know what you’re doing. But I actually one of the services I offer is, insert name of popular learning app, support sessions. Because as we know with language, the same as with computers, there’s always more than one way to do things, more than one way to say things. And the app will teach you this way, and they’ll then check-in with you and test you as it were on that way, and you’ll say it that way. And then a week later, they’ll show you the other way to say it. And you’ve remembered the lesson from a week ago.

Sylvia Poll [00:24:49]:
Yeah. And you say it that way, and they say, oh, you’re wrong. And people come to you and say, but it wasn’t wrong a week ago. It’s like, it’s because it’s expecting you to give them that reply.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:25:01]:
Yeah.

Sylvia Poll [00:25:01]:
And that’s where it falls down. It’s as with all these intelligent things. It’s also making it relevant. I mean, we we’ve had a right good chuckle these last couple of weeks. One of our friends went to Greece, and he used one of the popular learning apps. So the three main phrases he learned to say in Greek was the avocado is pink.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:25:26]:
Very useful.

Sylvia Poll [00:25:27]:
Nico is a man, and he sits and reads the paper. He says, believe it or not, I never got to use those phrases on holiday. I never the first thing I said was if the a pink, because they’re either not on the card or they’re wet the past they date. And, you know, my first question when somebody starts learning Spanish with me is, right, what’s your favourite drink? What’s your favourite meal? Right. Let’s teach you how to say that because then you can get the drink you want the way you want it, you know, shaken, not stirred, all that stuff. Are you allergic to something? Let’s teach you how to say, I am allergic to peanuts. I am allergic to alcohol. I am allergic to whatever it is.

Sylvia Poll [00:26:19]:
You know, that can be really important to know. Absolutely. But also things like, I’d like my salad with a dressing on the side. I I would like my salad, but, I mean, personal choice. I love a salad, but can you just hold the anchovies? That’s me, by the way. But we all have our little things that we like. So Yeah. Yeah.

Sylvia Poll [00:26:48]:
Learn that. You need a different vocabulary if you’re going to five star inclusive resort in Mexico to if you’re going camping in rural Spain.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:26:57]:
Yeah.

Sylvia Poll [00:26:58]:
You know, tent pegs are useless in Mexico for that sort of a holiday. Yes. But really necessary to not blow your tent away.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:27:08]:
Not quite. So so I guess apps are useful. They can be a a a low cost way of dipping in and out. Yeah. But the power of learning from a real life human is that, you the nuance, they, get the nuances, they get the specific circumstances. You can tailor the lessons to the person’s need. And I guess, crucially, you can ask questions as well. Yeah.

Sylvia Poll [00:27:36]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:27:37]:
Got it.

Sylvia Poll [00:27:39]:
An app is like you’ve got putting your watch on and going for a run.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:27:42]:
Yeah.

Sylvia Poll [00:27:43]:
It’s great. But to get the right form, etcetera, you need a PT.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:27:48]:
Yeah. You know? I didn’t realise that you do the app support sessions. That that’s interesting. Well, what are the other ways in which people in which you help people and people work with you?

Sylvia Poll [00:27:59]:
So I do, one to one lessons, and that can be an hour or half an hour. For some people, an hour commitment is just too much because of scheduling. For some people, half an hour is more than enough, and that’s all the brain can handle Yes. For today at work. Because it is learning, and learning is exercising the brain.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:28:25]:
Mhmm. Absolutely. Yes.

Sylvia Poll [00:28:27]:
I’ve mentioned the, app support sessions, and I always say if if you think you’re doing one of those, when you’re doing your sessions on the app, just jot down the questions because then they’ll remember them. I help, particularly young people with exam prep, and that’s not just the actual language side of the exam. It’s also things like don’t congregate with your mates when you get to the exam because being nervous is contagious.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:28:57]:
It is. You know?

Sylvia Poll [00:28:59]:
If you get stuck, pause and breathe. If it’s an oral exam, pause, breathe, and say. Say it in Spanish. Show that you’re thinking in Spanish. Yeah. You know, little tips like that. And there’s a couple of phrases that, particularly kids can use. If they get stuck in they get that rabbit in the headlights, oh my god.

Sylvia Poll [00:29:23]:
They’ve asked me a question. There’s a couple of phrases you can use which can get you back into the flow of what you were saying. You know? And if you’ve got that phrase in your back pocket

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:29:33]:
Yeah. Yeah. Then it what else?

Sylvia Poll [00:29:36]:
It’s useful.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:29:37]:
Yeah. So you see so you help people with one to one lessons. You help people, with support when they’re learning through an app. You can help, people going through exams. What, do you do you do, I mean, do you do, like so, obviously, if if somebody’s going, hey, Sylvia, I’m going on a holiday to to to Spain in in a couple of months’ time. Can you help me learn enough to get by? That gives you a brilliant way to tailor the tailor the lessons to them. What about if I were to say, hey, Sylvia. You know, I’ve always fancied learning Spanish.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:30:16]:
No particular reason. I just it’d just be nice to learn Spanish. Do you have, like, courses that, that people can go on just for more general learning for the love of learning.

Sylvia Poll [00:30:25]:
Yes. So, I I do a a group session, and that’s sort of broken down into four week modules, and we sort of go through the steps. So you can do a four week module and then come back later for the next one. It just depends when I’m running it next. The idea is that over sort of eight to twelve weeks, you can get pretty good at directions, reading a menu, finding your way around, that sort of thing, but also going shopping independently. One thing a friend of ours found when she was shopping in the littles and oldies of Spain, which are actually branded exactly that. A lot of stuff was in packaging that concealed the contents.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:31:13]:
Oh, right.

Sylvia Poll [00:31:14]:
We were actually in a supermarket. I was there with her, and she said, is this sugar? I was like, no. It’s self raising flour. She goes, oh, best not put it in my tea then. It’s like, yeah. That would be disappointing when you got home.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:31:28]:
Would be just

Sylvia Poll [00:31:30]:
You know, grocery lists, those sorts of things. And the other thing is, you know, if you are stuck on holiday, friends of mine, they were on an extended holiday and needed some follow-up from a consultant in Spain. Now doctors generally because the language of medicine is English, doctors will generally speak pretty decent English. But the gatekeepers, the receptionists, the secretaries Mhmm. They may not do. Yeah. So what I did was I rang up the clinic. I made the appointment.

Sylvia Poll [00:32:06]:
I then, helped them find a local taxi. Off they went. Once they got into the appointment with the doctor, it was all in English. No problem. You know, this is a medication I normally take. Absolutely fine. They were absolutely made up. Yeah.

Sylvia Poll [00:32:21]:
But getting that appointment and the other thing was finding the right they needed, an ophthalmic surgeon, not an optometrist.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:32:30]:
Oh, right. Yes.

Sylvia Poll [00:32:31]:
And knowing the difference of that in Spanish was difficult because they kept on saying, oh, so you need new glasses? Yeah. Just, you know, should’ve gone to lifesavers. But, they didn’t. They needed that clinical, expertise. So I was able to facilitate that for them. Beautiful. And it didn’t take me very long. It got them out of a jam.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:32:58]:
Love it. Love it. So there’s a lot of different ways. There’s a lot of different reasons why one would, benefit from learning a second language. Spanish is as good a second language as any. It’s one of Blakemore most widely spoken languages in throughout the world, not just in Spain.

Sylvia Poll [00:33:16]:
No. Definitely.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:33:18]:
In fact And there are no

Sylvia Poll [00:33:20]:
If you look at the map of the Spanish speaking world, Spain is actually a tiny little bit. You’ve got, you know, officially from the Mexico border southwards, except for Brazil, all of South America, Central America, speak Spanish. But in reality, because of migration, I’ve heard rumours that as far north as New York and The United States, you can’t get a babysitter or a plumber unless you have some basic Spanish.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:33:46]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Sylvia Poll [00:33:48]:
I actually had a Romanian locksmith who, because of the impact of telenovelas, the Spanish soaps, He spoke Spanish far better than he spoke English. Wow. That was in The UK. Yeah. You know? And I’m having this conversation with a locksmith in Spanish. Yeah. What the heck’s going on? But it helps. You never know when it’ll help.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:34:18]:
Certainly does. What for people who wanna find out a bit more, find out a bit more about you, about what you do, or maybe you can get in touch, what’s the best way for them to do it?

Sylvia Poll [00:34:29]:
The best way is to come to, my website, which very original. It’s called Spanishthefunway.com.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:34:37]:
And Spanish the fun way, all one word, Spanish the fun way dot com.

Sylvia Poll [00:34:44]:
That’s it.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:34:45]:
Love it.

Sylvia Poll [00:34:46]:
Love it. Through that, you can drop me an email, contact me, etcetera. But

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:34:50]:
Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. So spanishthefunway.com. Because that’s how an important way in which, Sylvia teaches Spanish is making it fun.

Sylvia Poll [00:35:02]:
Yes.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:35:03]:
So, yeah, Spanish the fun way dot com. Sylvia is available on the on the socials. He’s available on WhatsApp and all these other things as well. All the details are in the show notes. As always, Noble, and look for the one with Sylvia Pohl. You’ll find all the contact details there, or just go straight to spanishthefunway.com. Sylvia, time is marching on as it inevitably does. Thank you so much for for taking, time out to to share with us the the benefits of learning another language and, the benefits of learning that language from a real human and some of the ways in which which you’ve been able to help many, many people, around the world to, to enjoy holidays, to get the treatment they need, and to to improve their work through, by learning Spanish the fun way with you.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:35:54]:
Thank you so much, Sylvia.

Sylvia Poll [00:35:55]:
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:35:58]:
And thank you, dear viewer, dear listener. Thank you for joining us. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have. Please do remember to give us a like, a comment, to share, and subscribe. Give us a review on your favourite platform. It all helps to boost the coverage of the show. I will catch you in another episode very soon. For now, I’m gonna leave you with Sylvia’s favourite quote, a a really powerful quote this.

Keith Blakemore Noble [00:36:26]:
A river cuts through rock not because of its power, but because of its perseverance. You’ll be listening to the Keith Blakemore-Noble Radio Show. To find out more, visit KeithBlakemoreNoble.com.