Beginning Tip: Language!

The Dominican Republic is a fully Spanish speaking country. It is rare to find someone that speaks another language in areas far from the hotels and resorts. Even though the population is nice and will try to help, you will have a tough time. So, a nice tip is to learn how to speak basic Spanish (especially those little phrases that will help you survive). 

Spanish is known to be an easy language. In some sense, it is. Speaking it and reading it out loud is very simple because, in 95% of the time, each word it's written how it's pronounced. This means that a certain combination of letters such as "m" and "a" will always be pronounced the same. In the words, "tomar" (to drink) and "amar" (to love), which are 2 verbs, the combination of the letters "m" and "a" (-ma-) is pronounced exactly the same. A little trick is learning the sounds of each letter in the alphabet first. 

This foreign language isn't scary! Watch out! there are some words that aren't entirely pronounced how they are supposed to be written. However, don't worry because it's a little number of words. In general, as I mentioned before, the language is pretty easy. Spanish, nevertheless, has some difficulties that a learner may have problems with. Some of these difficulties are the stressing of one syllable in a word, the use of written accent marks, and conjugating verbs. 

Duolingo and Memrise are several different websites (which are also available as mobile apps) that are helpful for beginning to immerse in the language. Duolingo will help you practice and memorize many vocabulary words, and how does the basic grammar work. Whereas Memrise is another useful website that will help to memorize important phrases. It's important not to exclusively depend on apps when learning a new language. Learning a language is more than just looking at one phone or a computer.

If you do know Spanish, great! However, arrive on the island with an open mind because Dominicans have some weird expressions that another Spanish speaker may not understand.