Hola a todos. Well, I've finally found it--the key to learning Spanish. It's in a book entitled _Bastard Tongues _ by linguist Derek Bickerton that was reviewed in today's Washington Post Book World. Here's the key passage: "Most of the Spanish I speak was learned from drunks in bars. In fact, drunks are the world's most underrated language teaching resource. The stereotypic drunk speaker slurs his speech to the point of unintelligibility, but in real life this happens only in the final, immediate-pre-collapse phase of drunkenness. Prior to that, drunks speak slowly and with exaggerated care, because they know they are drunk but don't want other people to know. Moreover, since they're already too drunk to remember what they just said, they repeat themselves over and over, and don't mind if you do the same. If you're gregarious and a drinker, it's by far the easiest way to learn a new language." So I guess we can throw away our grammar books and all those CDs and just spend our days/nights talking to drunks in bars (Spanish-speaking drunks, por supuesto! ). ¡Nos vemos allí! :mrgreen: