The 7 Levels of Spanish Fluency

[00:00:00]There are seven clear levels of skill when it comes to speaking Spanish, going from a sentence or two all the way up to indistinguishable from a native. Every one of you will sit at a different level, and how you navigate this progression is critical to how quickly you'll learn Spanish. Now, having taught thousands of Spanish students over the years, I'll show you what each level sounds like and what it takes to improve. I'm going to use clips of well-known celebrities speaking Spanish to highlight their skill level and what they need to focus on to hit that next stage. Starting with level one, a few set phrases.

[00:00:41][screaming] [cheering] Now, I apologize to any Swifties putting Taylor at level one. Regardless, I think this is fantastic. She says, "My Spanish isn't very good.

[00:01:01]Madrid, but I love Madrid." So, she's taken the time to learn a few phrases and produce them on stage, and the crowd just goes wild. Right now, to be fair, probably anything that Taylor Swift says at a concert, people are going to go crazy. But she also went on a television program in Spain called Migto.

[00:01:22]>> Oh, a little bit. [laughter] I'm trying really hard.

[00:01:32]>> All right. So, here the presenter says and she says, now this is a great phrase that she's learned, which is similar to how are you, what's up, what's going on. It's a wonderful way to start a casual conversation in Spanish. And then the presenter says, and clearly she understood the question, but at her current stage, she couldn't respond. You know, she just says, "I'm trying." Now, she might have been able to respond to this question in Spanish if she wasn't in front of a live audience, but the stress of being on national television in another language has got to be right up there.

[00:02:11][laughter] Are you [laughter] see?

[00:02:27][applause] [applause] So here we have Tom Hanks doing a similar thing. He's got a couple of phrases memorized and he knows this word for which is the Spanish word for meatballs. And the fact that he's produced just some Spanish, the people in the audience love it. And one of the things that I love about Spanish and people who speak Spanish as their first language espanoes is that they tend to be so appreciative of you taking the time to learn anything about the Spanish language. I went to San Fermin the running of the bulls festival several years ago and I spoke to a kid sitting next to me in Spanish and he asked where are you from and I said so Australiano I'm Australian. He then went on to explain that every single time he had met an Australian and just simply said, "Hola," the people would respond, "dude, I don't speak Spanish." So sometimes the bar is so low that if you give a Spanish native anola ketal bond or Madrid, like Tom and Taylor have done here, you can make lifelong friends. So, this first level is about learning a couple of set phrases that you can pull out to show that you know something about the Spanish language. Now, you may not be able to respond to questions or understand what people are saying to you, but it doesn't matter. It's a perfectly natural starting place.

[00:04:02]Everybody has to go through this step.

[00:04:04]And if Taylor or Tom want to take their Spanish to the next level, they should add more vocabulary. 100 to 200 important common Spanish words. learn how to ask questions that allow them to navigate in Spanish just a little bit further, which takes us to level two, some back and forth.

[00:04:29][music] >> [music] >> So Jack Black is the ultimate showman, right? Like he is always performing at level 100. Now, one thing that he does really well in this clip is that he's trying to express something and in the middle of his sentence, he asks a question in Spanish, right? So he says Mexico and then he gets stuck and he says countries countries >> and the person responds and then he says and he just keeps continuing his song and what he wanted to say was Mexico is better than all the countries of the world. So, and then he says he knows this isn't right. But at the same time, he doesn't care. He's just presenting with so much energy and charisma that it just doesn't matter.

[00:05:39]You know exactly what he's trying to say. Now, if he was trying to complete this sentence accurately, it might be something like, "In my opinion, you have the best food.

[00:05:51]Now, this reminds me one of the first times I ever tried to speak Spanish when I was at say this level myself. One thing I kept doing is that I would talk under my breath, right? I would kind of like say like, you know, I was embarrassed and I was shy and I was just hoping that the person I was speaking with would understand me and not notice my mistakes. But this Spanish native I was practicing with gave me some really important advice. essentially saying be like Jack Black. He said even if you make an error, even if the grammar is completely wrong, you don't know if it's or you just substitute for because you can't remember the word for food like Jack Black did. If you speak clearly and talk to me, I can figure out what you're trying to say. But if you mutter and talk under your breath and you know this sort of thing and use like closed off body language like maybe like this he says I just can't make out the sounds that are coming out of your mouth so I have no chance of guessing. So if you embody Jack Black's I don't care approach. I'm just going to put it out there. Then people can actually figure out what you are trying to say even if there are a lot of mistakes.

[00:07:08]Say hola black and movie King Kong in espanol. King Kong is a king. Ray reong gorilla.

[00:07:44]Gracias.

[00:07:50]Yeah. So again in this clip, Jack Black is asking something in Spanish and he's adjusting and he's clearly forming his sentences in Spanish on the fly. This is level two in action. He's able to communicate. He's got a bunch of Spanish words in his head. He's able to put them together and he's able to ask questions like in espanol, what is it called in Spanish? Or how does one say it? Now, if you are at this level, this is a great way to learn. If you're with someone who speaks both English and Spanish, you can flip between languages like this. It's totally fine to do this. In fact, I love to do this myself when I'm at a lower level in a new language. Now another couple of questions which would be really valuable at this level would be which means how is it written or how is it spelled and then pronuncia how is it pronounced. Now you can use these four questions with someone who speaks English and Spanish to build your knowledge and practice. Now if you do this a lot the next level would not be far away. Level three a basic conversation.

[00:09:05]So, what we're seeing here with Will is a clear step up in skill. He's putting together longer, more grammatically complex sentences and using very specific vocabulary as well.

[00:09:23]>> I mean, this sentence, so this is a correct grammatically complex sentence. We went in the past fimos to a part polo like a match of polo or a game of polo. In English we would say we went to a polo match. So the word order is reversed from English and he got this right. Now his pronunciation is inconsistent but it's very good.

[00:09:52]>> So his pronunciation of this city name is fantastic. Now this is difficult for English natives and for anybody not learning Spanish. You'll hear all sorts of combinations for the pronunciation of this city. You'll hear buenosis, buenos, buenos, iris. And when I'm teaching pronunciation to Spanish students, I always say the thing you want to focus on first and foremost is the vowels of Spanish. Now, Will got this right here.

[00:10:21]So to say this city name, it's really about the U and E, which is pronounced kind of like a W as in the start of the word wedding in English. And then we have no, which is like no in English, but way shorter. So in English we say no. In Spanish we say no.

[00:10:43]No. You hear it's way shorter. We sort of want to end that O almost like you're halfway through. No. in English, no not in Spanish. Then we have the ai which is like I it's a dip thong which is a combination of two vowel sounds in one syllable. And an interesting word to think about here to try to get this right would be the word side. So si side. So we have a dip thong in English as well which is very close to that ai combination in Spanish. And really to get closer rather than saying side it would be about opening the mouth a little bit wider side. Side and then we have e s on the end s like the letter in the alphabet. So we have buenoides buenoides.

[00:11:36]Buenosides focus.

[00:11:52]>> All right. Now, we have another clip of Will speaking Spanish. And my first impression of this interaction is that the presenter like she's has an accent from Puerto Rico and she's going really fast, right? It's almost like you see the expression on Will's face and he's like, "Oh my goodness, what have I got myself into?"

[00:12:13]>> Okay. Well, so again, I'm looking for vows here, right? Then he says, So I have a Spanish teacher. He says, it sounds like he adds an O at the end there, but I think he knows this one. He knows it's and then he says is the noun trip or it could be the subjunctive. But what he really wants to say here is soigo, right? And then he has for my interviews which really needs to be.

[00:13:17]So again, we're looking for vow accuracy here. One of the things about English is that we are so flexible with vowels.

[00:13:24]Tomato, tomato, castle, castle. Again, again, economics, economics. We have a lot of flexibility with vowels. In Spanish, we don't. Each vow needs to be clear and needs to be consistent between words. Now, for Will to take his Spanish up a level, his pronunciation's pretty good, but he needs to figure out the vowels that are required for the words that he is using. He also needs to work on the grammar of his sentences. And at this level, ideally, he's getting all of his conjugations accurate. So things like the teacher that travels with me.

[00:13:56]We really want this to beigo.

[00:13:59]Level four complex conversations.

[00:14:12]Yeah. So for level four, I've picked this clip with Ben Affleck and listening to him, we've got another clear step up in skill.

[00:14:39]In this conversation, he's talking about complex topics. He's talking about the character that he plays in his movie, issues with alcohol, being divorced, and how he relates personally to the character. Now, he does this whole interview in Spanish, and he has to reach for English words every now and then, and he makes up a few Spanish words, but for the most part, he understands all of the questions, and he responds in Spanish. And one of the things that grabbed my attention is the first thing that comes out of his mouth.

[00:15:16]So, this is a fascinating combination for me for several reasons. On this channel, I often talk about this rule because it's a common mistake, right? We always want to say gracias.

[00:15:28]Always. This is always gracias. Gracias. I ask students to say this hundreds of times. Just get used to this combination. Now, we heard the interviewer say it just a moment before him.

[00:15:43]So she said then he responds.

[00:15:52]Now I see this sort of thing all the time as a Spanish teacher. Sometimes students can perfectly understand a message but not notice an important subtle grammatical component like bor instead of bar. So one of the skills that's really important here is noticing what someone is saying to you and then trying to repeat it. Gracias poor. Whatever you need to say next. Now then he responds graphia. Now gracia is a perfectly acceptable way to say thank you in Spanish. But the place where I would expect to hear it pronounced this way would be in southern Spain in Ander Lucia. Now I remember being in a supermarket in Malaga in the south of Spain and having a checkout lady pack my bags and hearing her say with enormous energy and enthusiasm as I was leaving.

[00:16:36]She said, "Gracia, adio, gracia, adio."

[00:16:41]Right? So, the the final S is disappearing. And we've got that C pronounced like a th. Now, in my research for this video, I couldn't find any reference of Ben studying Spanish in Spain. I don't think he's filmed a movie in Spain either. So saying graphia like this, while it is perfectly acceptable, it's just a bit unusual given what he says in the next breath, which is that he learned Spanish for a year while he was filming a TV show in Mexico. Then we have now thanks for having me. This concept of having me is an English idea that's difficult to translate. The verb in Spanish is referring to possession.

[00:17:24]So if you say because we need to say it's kind of like saying thanks for possessing me, it's like thanks for having me as part of your possession, your ownership, which doesn't quite translate the way we want it to. would be much better here to say.

[00:17:51][music] Now, something else that I thought was worth pulling out was he says, so again, we've got this verb da which is a tricky verb. And I think what Ben meant to say here was that this character has suffered a lot in his life. So in Spanish when someone has done something like I have seen that movie, I have tried that dish then we need the verb I have done something instead of so what you would want to say here is now something else he says Right.

[00:18:43]So, we kind of like he's wrestling here with this idea. And to be fair, it's not an easy one to express. Now, if I were to reword what he was trying to say here, you need to know how to ask for help if you're going through a tough time.

[00:19:03]Now another option rather than say you have to in Spanish we can often talk in a more impersonal voice we can say something like one must know how to ask for help when facing difficulties.

[00:19:22]So not deficil he kind of like made up something here kind of combined the word deficil with he knew it kind of had to end with. So we sort kind of put the two together but difficulties and the other thing to point out here is the verbula ask for help. Now he's used the verbont which means to question. Now for Ben to get to the next level it's about jumping back into his Spanish studies reviewing verbs like noun gender and looking at other nuances of the language like bor and level five conversational freedom. Get more.

[00:20:20]This is really impressive. Gwenna sounds fantastic when she speaks Spanish.

[00:20:24]Really like really good. Like she sounds so fluent. Her accent and her pronunciation are just so dialed. So pulling out this sentence.

[00:20:38]So firstly let's listen to her vows.

[00:20:43]>> Now it is very common with this word for say female friend in Spanish for students that have English as a first language almost kind of like pronounce it similar to this brand name in English. As I mentioned earlier, we've got quite a lot of variation with the pronunciation of words in English and we have vowel flexibility. So some people might say this omega. Some people might say this omega omega. Some people might say, right? So we've got all of these variations here, but I I just want to focus on the variation which is closest to Spanish, which would be something like amigga. Omega. So in Spanish, we really don't want our vowels kind of like these English vowels. They're kind of closed. So omega. Omega. I like this.

[00:21:32]Omega. Watch. In Spanish, it really needs to be much wider these vowel sounds. So, not amigga, but a So, English amigga, Spanish, amigga.

[00:21:49]Amigga. Now, all of her vowels here are really good. On top of that, there are some tricky consonant sounds. So, I was just kind of highlighting a little bit there, the G. So in a word like or amigga, it's not a strong G like or amigga. We want those G's to be very soft. They're made in the same part of the mouth as a G, but rather than being like a hard stop like G, you almost want to vibrate just in that part of the mouth. So it's like and g- amigga. Now, we also have the D in lres. Same thing. We don't want this to be a strong D like l.

[00:22:36]We want this to be like a really soft d kind of like the th sound in the word breathe the so it's almost made between the teeth. So, lres.

[00:22:52]Now, something else that jumps out at me listening to Gwennneth after just having listened to Ben is that there is a calmness to Gwennneth when she speaks Spanish. It's almost like she has zero stress. She's just as cool as a cucumber here. Now, to be fair, the subject matter that Ben was talking about may have been a little bit heavier, but it just felt a lot like he was forcing his Spanish and wrestling with the language.

[00:23:15]Whereas Gwennneth, she speaks with a similar level of charisma and charm as she would in English, her first language. You know, being the big movie star that she is. For the record, Gwennneth's Spanish is not perfect. It's advanced for sure, but she's making grammatical errors. This is almost like this is her superpower in Spanish. It's just her ability to speak so calmly and confidently even though there are kind of things going wrong. And maybe this is something that she has internalized as a performing actress. You know, mistakes happen. just pretend like the mistakes aren't there. The show must go on. Some of the things that she could do to improve, we can pull out a few sentences. So, >> so in English, this is kind of like saying the teacher, they have said to us where the plural is they as in more than one person. But what she really wants to say here is so we have we really want to say.

[00:24:21]So we need the preposition here.

[00:24:32]So she says and is masculine. So she gets this right. Then she says now it needs to be experienc so we need to match for gender. And then she says so she goes from which was correct to we want to stick with the first option there.

[00:25:00]Now, regardless, as you can see, Gwennneth has a freedom to her Spanish.

[00:25:06]That's the word that really comes to mind for me when I listen to her speak.

[00:25:09]She doesn't seem burdened in any way by speaking Spanish. She can just articulate what she wants to say. She can tell stories. She can talk about her opinions and her life experiences. And one thing I would say is that at this level, a lot of students would be quite happy to achieve what she's achieved.

[00:25:27]Most of the students I work with want a level of freedom like this to be able to use the language and enjoy talking to people and meeting people, sharing stories. And Gwennneth has absolutely no problems doing that. That said, if she wants to step up to the next level, it's going to be all about clearing up these little grammatical errors. So, she needs to go back to studying a bit more of this grammar, trying to figure out tenses, moods, prepositions, and matching gender. Level six, mastery.

[00:25:58]See, they're mainstream. No.

[00:26:30]>> Yeah. Wow. When I first saw Freddy Hymore speak Spanish, I was really impressed. One of the things that makes him step up to level six is his lack of errors. I've watched several interviews through now of him speaking Spanish. And he often chooses the right tense. He often gets the gender right. He uses the right prepositions. There is a lot going on in the details of his Spanish, which is what elevates him to this mastery level.

[00:27:01]All right. And having watched a lot of his Spanish now, it is genuinely tricky for me to pull out errors. But this is understandable because Freddy has a double degree in Spanish and Arabic from Cambridge and he spent a year working at a law firm in Madrid. So that's quite an education in Spanish, but it I would say that it definitely shows. Now, one thing he does, if I'm actually going to pull out anything, would be that in several interviews, he opens the interview by saying, "I'm going to make a lot of errors."

[00:27:49]>> So in this first case, he says, And then he says, "So there are three things to say about this. Firstly, he picked up on a common mistake that English speakers make. In English, we make mistakes. So it is tempting to use the Spanish verb for make, which is to say, but in Spanish, we commit mistakes. And he got this right. Right. He's got the right verb. But the irony is that even though he's internalized this rule correctly, he has migrated the I across from the English verb commit. In English, we commit with an I. in Spanish he needs to say not he needs to say it's not it's so despite Freddy's level of mastery he still makes mistakes with the odd vow every now and then but the third thing that comes to mind for me and for someone at Freddy's level is the psychological impact of prefacing what you're about to do by saying you're going to do hurt poorly. I'm going to try and pass this test, but I'm probably going to fail. I'm going to try and shoot this goal, but I'm probably going to miss. As a teacher, I'd rather students set themselves up to succeed rather than apologize in advance. And while preparing for this video, I was thinking about it. I can't imagine that Freddy goes onto say the set of a movie or TV show and says, "Oh, I'm about to do this scene and I'm going to make a lot of mistakes. I'm going to forget my lines and I'm going to act really poorly." So like Jack Black or Gwennneth Paltro, just start speaking Spanish. And if mistakes come, they come. You don't need to tell everybody, including yourself, that you're about to make a lot of them, right? And then the thing is is that he goes on to make very few mistakes anyway. That said, something that does happen with his Spanish is a lot of little selfcorrections. This itself is a sign of someone who has achieved a very high level, but is dedicated to being as perfect as they can be.

[00:30:07]and that face there at the end, you know, I figure is him being super self-critical. Now, I would say working with many Spanish students over the years, this is common. People with type A personalities are very driven. and they want to be perfect all the time and little slips, little errors are clearly bothering Freddy here. Now, regardless, from my point of view as a Spanish teacher, Freddy is producing Spanish at an incredibly high level for a nonnative speaker. For him to take his Spanish to the next level, some of his areas for improvement might be psychological, less so than any vocabulary or grammar choice. The other element would be starting to really shape his Spanish accent towards a particular city, which is a hint of what's required for level seven. Level seven, native passing.

[00:31:03][snorts] Now, this seventh level is going to be controversial, as all top spots are.

[00:31:23]What I was looking for was a celebrity that didn't have Spanish as a first language, but speaks it in a way that is indistinguishable from a native. And this is not easy to find. But for this category I have picked VGO Mortonson.

[00:31:58]director.

[00:32:07][laughter] Now, when I listen to VGO, his Spanish sounds unbelievable, right? To me, he sounds native like. But one of the things that is going to make this pick controversial is whether he is a learner of Spanish or truly bilingual. Now, to defend this choice, his father was Danish, his mother was American, and at home the language was English. Spanish never came from his parents. He was born in the United States and he moved to Buenosades when he was two. Now, he probably entered the school system in Argentina when he was about four or five and then he attended school there until he was 11 before moving back to the United States where he spent the rest of his developmental years. Then on this point of varying accent, something that is important for level seven for someone to be native like is not only do they need to be very accurate with their vocabulary and their grammar, but they need to have an accent that places them somewhere in the world, ideally a city.

[00:33:08]So the question is how much does VGO's accent sound like he's from Wenocides?

[00:33:13]Now I have to be honest and say that you know I'm a nonnative teacher of Spanish.

[00:33:17]I've only learned Spanish as an adult myself and I haven't spent any time in Argentina studying Beno Spanish and the Spanish of Buenosides. So I'm not well placed to truly judge how authentic Vgo's accent is. So I reached out to an Argentinian friend who has lived in Buenosides for many years and I asked him what he thought of VGO's accent. I asked, "Does he sound porteno to you?"

[00:33:39]And he responded, "Yes, he sounds like a porteno living abroad." So for my friend in Argentina, he does have an Argentinian accent. He sounds like he's from Buenoses, but it's like he's been out of the country for many years. So some of the elements of his pronunciation may have softened or slightly shifted over time. All right, so let's have it out in the comments.

[00:34:01]Debate with me below. Did I get this seventh spot wrong? Should I have picked someone other than VGO because he actually is bilingual? Are there any other obvious celebrities that I missed that could potentially sit in this level seven spot? How about yourself? What did you think of these seven levels? And where would you place yourself on your own journey to learn Spanish? Now, if you are a student of Spanish and you're not improving as fast as you'd like, I want to offer you a free gift. We have a guide for developing conversational Spanish quickly and effectively. The guide is broken up into the seven key areas where students often get stuck.

[00:34:35]Mindset, memory, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, listening skills, and speaking skills. Almost every student gets stuck in one of these areas. Now, no matter what you are struggling with, you can move past it.

[00:34:47]The key is knowing what to focus on. You can go to realfastpish.com/guide.

[00:34:52]Just put in your email address and we'll send you the guide for free. Now, if you'd like help from us, then you can reach out to me or one of the other members of the Real Fast Spanish team, and we'll figure out where you're at right now and what you can do to take your Spanish to the next Lib.