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Comment by mixmastamyk | Hacker News Reader

Just a comment on the Spanish in Spain. They don't speak "Spanish" there, but a number of languages instead. Unless you want to learn Catalan, choose Madrid. Sure they understand Castellano but will prefer the local language.

(BTW, this boggled the mind of my younger backpacker self from California who grew up on Mexican Spanish.)

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I strongly disagree, you can work in Barcelona without knowing Catalan if you don't have a public facing job, like most tech-related duties are.

Spanish and Catalan are both official languages in Catalonia and everyone there understands and is able to speak Spanish (even more so than Catalan, given the amount of immigrants in Barcelona).

I'm from Spain and have lived in Barcelona without speaking Catalan at all, so don't spread misinformation.

> I'm from Spain and have lived in Barcelona without speaking Catalan at all.

Ok, but this advice is not useful to the second-language learner. To become fluent one needs immersion, and learning two similar languages at once is going to slow that down a lot. Not to mention a business trip to Mexico City or Lima, not helpful.

Similar to advising a Chinese person to study English in Edinburgh or the Netherlands, while it's technically possible, hardly optimal.

You do know they speak in English in Scotland, right?

But is a different english, tainted with local mannerisms and variants that are not useful out of Scotland.

Indeed, I needed subtitles on my first few viewings of Trainspotting.

This is an exact metaphor. Should I go to Scotland if my main goal were to learn english? Is a beautiful place, no doubt about it, and totally worth it to pay a visit, but there are easier ways.

You'll get a cool accent though.

I'd be quite careful with this of comment as it has the potential to upset people. The people in Spain do speak Spanish yes but in many regions they speak their own languages that are not dialects but distinct languages. In fact on top of Spanish there are 4 other officially recognised languages:

Catalan Galician Basque Aranese

And still there are more languages that are not recognised, pretty cool :)

Catalan is not a local dialect—its a distinct language just like French, Italian, or Portuguese. There as many differences between Catalan and Castellano (which is literally "Spanish", no need for quotes there) as there are between Swedish and Norwegian, or Spanish and Portuguese.

Ever the more reason to choose ahead of time.

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