Hola, ¿cómo estás?

When you’re learning Spanish, it can seem like one lonely journey. At times, it will make you want to pull your hair out and just give up, right? But you better not! You absolutely cannot!

I am not sure exactly when he started learning Spanish, but when I was at the point of no return in my Spanish studies, I paid more attention to our former Mayor of New York City when he did summaries of the news for the Spanish speaking people watching.

Of course, I never met the guy face to face, but I saw him enough on TV and felt he was a ‘real person struggling with the language‘. I was able to identify with him and felt we had a common struggle.

Watching him read those speeches, motivated me a great deal!

I said to myself:

1. This guy is a billionaire, he must have a super private Spanish tutor or (a team of tutors).

2. He may not sound good, but has enough courage to speak a foreign language in-front of the entire city.



This young lady I know, who doesn’t know one word of Spanish was able to recognize how “Horrible” he sounded.

She once said to me, “Eldon, do you hear Bloomberg speaking Spanish, he just needs to stop, he needs to stop! He needs to quit! “.

This is great example of why we are so terrified to speak, we are afraid we would get similar feedback or worse. So we don’t have to worry about natives laughing or criticizing us, we also have to worry about the ones that are not even interested in learning Spanish!

I mean, he is the mayor of the city and he is a billionaire, I am sure no one had said anything to him personally about how bad he sounds.

For a person like you and I, it would be nothing for someone to roast our Spanish speaking abilities into oblivion which may discourage us and cause us to leave Spanish alone forever.

So the negative backlash will probably come from a really good friend who doesn’t even care about Spanish…

Hmmm, maybe this is why it’s so hard to find people wanting to learn Spanish in my personal life, hmmm.

I the friend criticizing Bloomberg: “Girl, leave the man alone! At least he trying!“.

You don’t ever want to quit learning Spanish, it’s one of the most rewarding feelings ever. The progress may seem slow, but don’t ever give up! You’ll improve, believe me, and oftentimes, it will be subconscious.

When you are using different Spanish learning materials such as Spanish music, Overtime, little by little, you’ll improve.

I kind of used Bloomberg as a measuring stick. I knew he wasn’t a “Professional Spanish speaker” and people made fun of him, but I knew speaking like him and surpassing him was a realistic goal and it would no doubt cost me a lot less money than the person he is paying to help him with his Spanish.

He gave me the courage to not give a [email protected] and just speak using the little Spanish I knew.

I suck at public speaking… I’ve always struggled with it. I’ll choke in both English and Spanish, but that’s another story.

Mayor Bloomberg would attempt to speak in Spanish in front of millions of people! So I gave him a lot of credit for that.

I used to be scared to speak with Spanish-speaking people because I thought a lot about what they would think about me – my accent, my pronunciation, or just saying something completely wrong.

I mean, they already switched up on me and say, “Hi, I am fine” when I’d say, “Hola, ¿cómo estás?” to them.

Watching Bloomberg helped a lot with my confidence and made me say to myself, “I should be able to approach ANYONE and just start speaking, even if I am all over the place“… If he can speak to millions of people, then I should be able to speak to a regular person in the street.

Over the years though, I noticed that he started to read better, but man, that accent. He would pronounce each word like a “Super Gringo“. He never tried to at least imitate and exaggerate the Spanish accent, which is a big part of the fun when learning the language!

This was my only issue with him, as I advanced, I noticed he was pronouncing every single word, every syllable as if he was reading English. Which is bad on the ear.

His message to those who had criticized him over the years was, “Get a life”, as mentioned in this New York Times article.

He also said, “And these people that make fun of me, you know, what do I care?“.

This is pretty much how I feel – Gotta love Bloomberg!

But I still respect and admire his efforts.

Today, I’d like to give you an example of one of Bloomberg’s speeches in Spanish. You can also download a PDF document in English and Spanish of what he is saying. Just like in Gritty Spanish episodes, I managed to slow it down as well.

I also got a native Spanish speaker, a Venezuelan who voice-acted in all versions of Gritty Spanish to do over Bloomberg’s summary!

As much as we appreciate Bloomberg’s effort, we don’t EVER want speak like him in Spanish!

I am talking about the lack of effort in attempting the pronounce the words a native would and saying it EXACTLY as if the word was an English word.

Even if you end up speaking Spanish with an accent, which is VERY possible – you’ll have many slipups where you pronounce a word as if you’re speaking English.

I think it’s important that you kind of resemble what a native sounds like…

So enjoy and have fun! When you’re done, be sure to check out some other blog posts on this site!