One thing I learned in researching for the book is that adding -ito to things to make them smaller or younger is purely Mexican, and comes from Mesoamerica.
Also it meant something more like “beloved” back then, and has morphed into it’s current meaning.
Man the high leagues in Duolingo are no joke. I’m trying to learn basic French ahead of a trip and have been crushing it lately, or so I thought. I’m in pearl league, the 3rd highest, and just topped 2000xp in a week for the first time. Felt pretty good… except I’m in 8th place. The top three are over 4000, with the leader sitting at 5300.
I just passed checkpoint 3. I don’t care about the leagues, but trying to get basic French for Montreal and a French trip next year.
I find it sadly humorous when I’m listening to commentators for whom English is not their first language who’ve still managed to develop the “I, mean” filler habit.
diamond league is way more chill.
Or “like”. Not so much commentators for that, just people who learned English later in life.
If your goal is advancing to the next league then a little tip is to wait a couple days to do your first lesson after the leagues reset. Your group is ordered by when you do your first lesson and the hardcore users will all be doing their first lesson at most a day after the leagues reset. The people in the later groups that fill will be putting up much lower numbers.
Montreal is tough to practice bc their English is quite good and they tend to switch really fast on me. Also, if you can sneak in a bit of listening practice from Quebecois media, It will help a ton bc they pronounce many words way differently from standard French.
OffQC is a cool blog if you really want to dive the Quebecois French rabbit hole.
I played at the playground before Covid and I was legitimately impressed how they’d seamlessly switch between English and French, and there was not a single time anyone made me feel bad about my lack of French. I’m so jelly of bilingual people
Yah it’s a plus and minus. Far less intimidating practicing French there than France, but also less opportunity to practice.
Yea true, I felt that in PDC in Mexico, you try to run some broken Spanish by anyone in the service industry and they just auto switch to English 
They try it on me in Puerto Vallarta even though I’m fluent in Spanish now and I just try to power thru and force them to stay in Spanish. It’s like a game of chicken.
Haha I can picture it in my head, but it does make sense considering 99% of gringos aren’t fluent I guess. Is there anything you try to say specifically to convey the fact you’re fluent?
I’d imagine that a lot of gringos learn a couple words to be polite then are relieved to switch. The fact that I want to continue in Spanish even when given an out normally signals that I prefer speaking it.
I feel like, at least in Playa, there’s almost no way anyone is actually gonna try and speak with you in Spanish unless you’re close to fluent. Or they want to sell something
I feel like you haven’t really made it in another language until native speakers feel fine talking to you in that language without trying to switch to English for your benefit.
I was proud of myself today. Had a demented old Spanish speaking guy who couldn’t use the translator and I managed to use my awful Spanish to get him to tell me his stomach hurt.
I’ve dated a Mexican girl for 2+ years (living together 8 months) and we speak Spanish 95% of the time.
The beach cities are a different breed and the locals are so used to white visitors that they’re wired to just stick to English.
It’s also why I don’t really like those cities, but we knew it’d be a temp stay and wanted to stay at a beach, so Puerto Vallarta it is. CDMX is much better for practicing Spanish, especially if you get out of the Condesa bubble.