# How much Spanish does someone who "doesn't know any Spanish" know?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-spanish-does-someone-who-doesnt-know-any-spanish-know/582903>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [May 23, 2011, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-spanish-does-someone-who-doesnt-know-any-spanish-know/582903 "2011-05-23T15:01:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2011, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-spanish-does-someone-who-doesnt-know-any-spanish-know/582903/21 "2011-05-24T15:54:13Z")

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I can follow some written Spanish, as in a couple of Cormac McCarthy’s books but that’s about it. I used to be able to make myself understood, after a fashion, in Spanish because of a friend who was of Mexican descent-----but I’ve lost that ability. I never could follow spoken Spanish with a very few exceptions, most of which involved cursing.

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**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2011, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-spanish-does-someone-who-doesnt-know-any-spanish-know/582903/22 "2011-05-24T16:20:25Z")

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> [@BigT](#):
>
> I think schmuck would be a better choice, as I knew that before I knew it was Yiddish. There’s another word that I can’t think of that was also like this. It starts with sh.

shlemiel  
shlamazel  
shmaltz  
schmuck  
shmooze  
shlep  
shikse  
shmutz  
shtick

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**Author:** ![wei\_ji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wei\_ji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wei_ji)\
**Post date:** [May 25, 2011, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-spanish-does-someone-who-doesnt-know-any-spanish-know/582903/23 "2011-05-25T01:46:34Z")

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I fall into the category of people who “don’t know a word of Spanish.” I took French in high school and Russian in college. There were no Hispanics where I grew up.

It is probably somewhat unusual for someone in America literally not to know a word of Spanish. I can count the fingers on one hand, I can say “hand,” along with a few other words, most learned via the movies, and I know a nice selection of bad words–still, I couldn’t order a taco in Mexico City.

As far as being able to claim to “speak” a bit of some language, I can understand enough French and Russian to get most of anything used as brief bits in an English-language movie, and with a dictionary I can generally translate a news story in Russian on the web. I don’t consider any of this significant language skill.

My standard on “speaking” these languages is that I know enough of each to get into trouble with a native speaker, but not enough to get back out again. It’s a good rule of thumb.

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