How to Find a Language Exchange Partner, and Also Get Their Name Right

Spanish nicknames, language exchange tips, and The Importance of Being Luis

“Hi Paco!” I texted the new number (in Spanish, after double checking my grammar in an app because I’m a cheater). “I work with your neighbor Cristina, and I’m from the United States. She said you might be interested in a language exchange to practice English and Spanish together.”

“Perfect,” said Paco. “Where and when? My name is Fran.”

Great start! I thought my coworker told me that her retired neighbor who wanted to practice English was a man, and when she sent me his contact info, it definitely said “Paco.” But now I’m unsure. In the U.S., Fran is a woman’s name. But I’ve heard all sorts of new names since living in Spain that I’d never heard before, like “Iker” and “Gorka.” So, who knows?

I check with Fran’s neighbor/my coworker, Cristina. She explains explain that “Fran” and “Paco” are both short for “Francisco.” Cristina is used to calling Franciscos “Paco,” because her husband is a Paco sort of Francisco. But it turns out the neighbor is a Fran sort of Francisco. Sorry to any Spanish-speakers reading this and thinking this is obvious, but Francisco doesn’t even have a P in it??? Pacos are like the Richards-Who-Go-By-Dicks of Spanish.

Anyway, I was off to meet with Fran.

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This isn’t my first language exchange. I’ve been trying to learn Spanish for longer than I’d care to admit, and language exchanges are a great way to practice speaking and listening. Usually, it looks like communicating for 30 minutes or so in one language and 30 minutes in another.

One of the many cool things about language exchanges is that you don’t need to worry, or at least not worry as much, about sounding stupid or messing up or having questions. Neither of you completely know what you’re doing. That’s kind of the whole point.

Normally, I might feel sort of like a burden if I can’t for the life of me remember the word for “cup,” (“taza” or “copa”) and the other person has to help me through it. But if the other person can’t remember the English word for “pareja” (“couple” or “pair”) two minutes later, then I don’t feel so bad. It also reminds me that it feels kind of good to help someone find the word they’re looking for. It’s not burdensome to me to say, “Oh, you mean ‘candle!’” It feels kind of like we solved a mystery together.

The problem with starting a language exchange is that it’s hard to know when you’re ready. In some ways, learning to speak a language requires being thrown into the deep end. If you want to feel more comfortable with speaking, you’ve got to… speak. But you feel like you can’t, because you’re not comfortable with it. So, you sit with your head between your knees for a little while and consider giving up the whole thing. Rinse, lather, repeat.

I personally have had many attempts at language exchanges that didn’t work out, mostly because of me. The two resources I have used are a website called My Language Exchange, which has been around since 2000 and has the aesthetic to show it, and the app HelloTalk. They both involve making a profile that indicates the language(s) you speak and the language(s) you want to practice. To message people on My Language Exchange, you need to be a paid “gold member.” HelloTalk is free, but has a premium version.

I had the same problem with both of these resources (to be clear, both of them are great, and, spoiler alert, the problem is me). You know when you decide to try a new thing, and you’re unrealistically gung-ho about it in the beginning? Like, you eat super healthy from Jan. 1-3 and then you eat a box of PopTarts for breakfast and two pizzas for lunch on Jan. 4? Or you vow to read 20 pages every day, but you’re really busy on day 5, so, rather than come back to it on Day 6 or considering adjusting your goal to be 10 or 15 pages a day moving forward, you just abandon it completely and don’t read anything for months because you’re ashamed and overwhelmed? Yeah.

I’d get in touch with everyone who messaged me, determined to spend several days a week practicing my Spanish. We’d message a bit, but most of the conversations fizzled out before we ever made it to a phone call. Either because I would panic and think, “I can’t even speak Spanish? Oh my god I’m so busy. Don’t know who to respond to first, so I’ll respond to nobody!” I went through several rounds of this over the course of a year. Sometimes the other person would be the one to stop responding, and that would be a relief, honestly.

Ultimately, I’ve emerged from the rubble¹ with two language partners I speak with weekly and another one I speak to probably once a month. The two weekly ones are, coincidentally, both named Luis. Costa Rica Luis works for an American company, so he speaks English every day in his job and doesn’t really need practice, but every once in awhile I get to teach him an American idiom, and he’s very patient with my Spanish questions. Spain Luis is a math teacher at a high school, and he's married to an Italian teacher. I enjoy talking with both of them, and our conversations have helped improve my Spanish immensely.

My Top Tips for Finding a Language Partner

1. You will make more connections on HelloTalk if you’re a native English speaker. But I got so many that I actually felt overwhelmed. Both apps are great, but my lasting exchange partners have all come from My Language Exchange.

2. Try to talk mostly with people named Luis. Have had great success with them.

3. Don’t worry! If you can only talk about basic things you’ve already learned from studying, like your daily routine or how many siblings you have, that's totally fine. It’s a great opportunity to learn some new words by starting with what you know. “My favorite food is pizza, and on top I like to have ham and… a yellow fruit, but not a banana? How do you say that?”² And then they tell you it’s “piña” and, boom, you have a new word.

4. Pick a frequency that will really work for you and try to stick with it. There have been many times where I think I’m too tired or too stupid or too busy and want to cancel a meeting. And there have been a few times I have. But I’ve never regretted pushing through and getting in some practice and conversation.

5. Courtesy of Spain Luis, who I just got off a weekly call with: There are sort of two methods you can take with these exchanges. In the past, he and his language exchange partners have agreed on topics for the next conversation, so both people can look up vocabulary, prepare some of what they might want to say and ask, etc. Or you can just dive in each week and see where the conversation takes you. I am pretty disorganized and chaotic, so the second kind works for me. Often, Luis will bring a few potential topics to discuss at our meetings just in case. Sometimes we use them, or sometimes something else comes up. Just find a method that works for you!

My meeting with Fran went well, by the way³. We had coffee at a café and talked. At some point, his wife came by on her way home from a doctor’s appointment, so I invited Jeff to come by too. His wife taught us the phrase "apuntarse a un bombardeo," which is like "to be up for anything."

Fran and his wife both know some English, but they haven’t practiced much since the pandemic, so they were feeling nervous and rusty. I, on the other hand, have been living and working in Spain for a few months. While I’m nowhere near where I want to be with my Spanish, I’ve been getting more practice than ever. We ended up speaking in Spanish almost the whole time, something that would have been hard for me to imagine a year ago. There’s something pretty cool about that.

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Question of the Week (courtesy of Jeff): If you had to get a tattoo tonight, what would you get? Please share in the comments.

Recommendation of the Week: Want more humorous writing, by someone who is both funnier and more British than me? Subscribe Tom Fish’s Not That You Asked, “a travel diary mainly consisting of awkward urinal encounters and disappointing celebrity sightings.” I’m a big fan of Tom’s recent post, linked below, about the TOP SECRET BEST VIEW of the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

Thanks for reading!

Italy Diaries: Roman roaming

1. My phone contacts are littered with names like “Laura (Language Exchange),” “Sergio (LE)” and “Jose (Spain).” My inconsistency in naming these contacts is a microcosm for my inconsistency in actually contacting these contacts.

2. Hawaiian pizza is just an example and not my actual favorite food, please don’t come for me.

3. Even though his name is not Luis.