Benny Lewis

speaker

589 appearances 9 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 12 Aug

Benny Lewis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 9 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.

Appearances

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Language & Travel Hacking · Mexico or Spain Spanish? You're Asking the Wrong Question! · 25 May 2026 podcast

Or you're setting yourself up uh for failure for the rest of your life. voice-verified

No, no, no. voice-verified

It's from pure exposure, from listening. voice-verified

From hearing the same word said the local way enough times that the local way is the one your mouth reaches for. voice-verified

So because of all of this, or despite all of this, my Spanish itself is still heavily skewed towards Castilian or European Spanish because that's where I've spent most of my time. voice-verified

It's where I sat my C two exam. voice-verified

And it truly has not hindered my experience in Mexico. voice-verified

I do try to research when I can. voice-verified

I have a specific Anki deck about Mexican slang and I try to stay on top of it, but it's mainly just to help with my understanding as others are speaking, since I'm not exactly going to pass myself off as a Mexican anytime soon. voice-verified

So when does dialect become a real thing you actually have? voice-verified

to think about and why am I voice-verified

Putting the effort in, it's because from the upper intermediate stage and beyond, that's when it becomes a higher priority in your triage system. voice-verified

I can put the effort into Mexican Spanish dialects precisely because I already speak fluent Spanish, regardless of the fact that I learned a different dialect originally. voice-verified

The point where you can have a real conversation, which is where you start sanding the standard version of the language off and replacing it with the local flavour. voice-verified

It's there and not before. voice-verified

Before that, dialect choice is a question that feels productive because it lets you research instead of speak. voice-verified

It's procrastination wearing a smart shirt. voice-verified

So if you're at the relative start of your language learning journey, whatever language you're learning, and you're losing sleep over which version of it to learn, seriously, just pick any of them. voice-verified

Pick the one you have the best teacher in or the one that t happens to have the most resources that you can access to help you learn. voice-verified

It doesn't really matter though, because it's the same core language with the same grammar rules and the same vast majority of vocabulary. voice-verified

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