Are There Jobs in South America?  So many subscribers and readers contact us to ask if there are jobs here. And the answer is yes, there are jobs.

However, in most cases, they require Spanish.

One of our expats in Uruguay is an experienced professional in the IT field. Uruguay has set out to make a name for itself internationally as an IT center. So the match seemed ideal. And it was! Except that when he applied for openings, each one told him they really wanted to hire him but he needed to speak Spanish. English was an asset in the job, but Spanish was also necessary. It didn’t have to be perfect Spanish, but he needed to be able to communicate.

Neighboring countries are similar.

There are occasional jobs in call centers where you are calling English speaking countries . Also there is a demand for native English speakers to teach English. To our surprise, you don’t need to know Spanish to be an English teacher.

But overall a lot more opportunity opens up to those who speak the language.

Once again we are offering our Spanish course. We chose this one because it is the course that your editor used to prepare for the citizenship hearing. Our attorney was pretty concerned about it for a while and kept asking how my Spanish was and warning me that I needed to be able to understand and answer the judge’s questions.

This was the course that I used and I really liked it. Although I was far from fluent at the time of my citizenship hearing, I understood the judge’s questions and was well able to answer them.

After he welcomed me as a brand new citizen though, he launched into an ongoing speech of information and instructions about things I needed to do. I was thankful that our immigration attorney was present because I had no clue about much of what he was saying. But of course Dr. Celano did and everything went very well.

So we want to provide something for you that will be an easy way to learn Spanish. There isn’t a lot of book study in this course. It just requires setting aside some time regularly to progress through the course.

And even if you’re retired, life here is a lot richer if you understand the language. And even if you think you’re too old, I know an 84 year old man learning Spanish and doing a good job. We have all kinds and ages down here in our neck of the woods! And they are doing well.

The good part is that it isn’t hard. For the English speaker there are many cognates in Spanish. Cognates are words in Spanish that are almost the same as English. In fact, sometimes I have just made a guess when I didn’t know a word, and luckily was right. For example, convenient in English is conveniente in Spanish. Easy, right? In fact, one aspect of this particular Spanish course is that it gives you quite a long list of cognates that are so easy to learn since you already really do know them. It suddenly adds a LOT of words to your Spanish vocabulary.

It’s kind of a joke though sometimes in that if you want to tell someone you are embarrassed, and you don’t know the word, that’s one you probably should not guess. The logical cognate sounds like it might be something like embarasado. But if you tell someone you are “embarasado” you will be telling them that you are pregnant!

There are many stories here among the expats about the hilarious mistakes we have made speaking Spanish. But the locals laugh along with us. In fact, they appreciate that you care enough to be learning their language.

In fact, you can try some free lessons here. Let us know what you think. And if you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask. We are always happy to help when we can. Click below to check our some free lessons.

FREE SPANISH LESSONS

For those who are concerned about the state of both political and financial circumstance in the United States, if that is your home country, we think you have time to do what you need to do to prepare to move. We don’t think you should waste time though, if that is your plan. But in our opinion you do have time. Hoping to see you all one day–in South America!