When I started university, I chose to study Mandarin in an attempt to adapt to how the world was changing and expand my language learning past the Romance Languages I had previously learned. Before I began learning it, I always felt that Chinese was spoken much more quickly than many other languages I had heard. However, I always wondered if that was because I didn't know the language or because Mandarin was really that much faster. Now, having some experience in the language, I still find that native speakers speak very quickly, but I realize the language is much slower as a whole than I originally thought.

The same cannot be said for my perception of Spanish.

I've recently moved to Sevilla for 6 months, wanting to find the best way to learn Spanish, but I moved here not knowing any Spanish. Though I grew up studying French and had some minimal exposure to Italian, Spanish was (and still is) an unknown to me. Upon arriving here, I immediately thought that Spanish speakers must not breathe. They speak so rapidly and intensely that they could not possibly pause for a breath. Having now lived here for almost 3 months, I still stand by that initial impression.