Misconception: English is widely spoken in the city of Loja.
Clarification: Over the last few years, a few people have claimed this to be true. I don't doubt that it was true for THEM on their visit. The problem comes in when they claim it is therefore true for everyone. For example, a 16-year-old attractive blond high school girl from the U.S. who spends a year as an exchange student living with a well-traveled wealthy family who does, in fact, speak a lot of English and also knows other English-speaking Ecuadorians to whom they will introduce their exchange student. Because of her age and physical characteristics, she will also meet more young men who can communicate in English. (My college-student son informs me that many young Ecuadorian men are obsessed with blond hair, who knew?)
Other examples are wealthy travelers from the U.S. who can afford to stay at high end hotels and eat at the finest restaurants. Yes, they may find quite a few English speakers in such places.
However, for most of us, we will not be living with a wealthy host family and we will not be spending our time at upscale resorts and restaurants (not all of which have English speakers, either, by the way).
Who else speaks English in Loja? Certainly, if you travel 45 minutes south from the southern edge of the city to Vilcabamba, you will find hundreds of English speakers due to the large expat community there. But what about in the city of Loja? Clearly there are other people here who speak English. Yes, that's true. But in a city of 200,000 people, what are your chances of running into them? I go for 7-8 months straight without running into a single Ecuadorian who can hold a conversation in English. English ability really is not very common here.
Now, I can already hear the people who are saying, "but, but, when we visited Loja we found English speakers and we didn't stay at high end hotels or eat at fancy restaurants..." Yes, some of you will find them. Or you will think you found them. (Some have memorized a few sentences in English related to their circumstances, but if you tried to have a conversation with them they would revert to Spanish, such as that nice man at the office supply store who can say "What color pen would you like?" or the taxi driver who can say, "Hello, how are you, where would you like to go?") But, in my experience, MOST of the North Americans who visit Loja find very few English speakers, if any, among the Ecuadorian population.
To put things in perspective, I have held English classes for Ecuadorians who have been teaching English for a living for over a decade, sometimes over 2 decades, and they cannot read, write, speak or understand English! And these are the people who are supposed to be teaching English to the children in the schools. They show me the textbooks (in English) from which they are supposed to create their lesson plans for the day, and they do not understand the text on the page. You can imagine how stressful this must be for them.
At a prominent university here in Loja, the meetings of the English Department are held in Spanish. You would think the professors would want to practice their English at least with each other. But many do not understand that much English and are embarrassed to try speaking it. My English major students were understandably frustrated that their former (and sometimes current) English professors taught them things that were completely incorrect.
Expats who live in Vilcabamba sometimes say that there is no worry about finding an English speaking doctor in Loja because there will always be one available. But when you have a medical emergency, you will not be wandering through the city looking for an English-speaking doctor. I have been to many doctors and dentists in Loja for my family and for clients who take me with them to translate and never once have I found a doctor in Loja who speaks more than a few words of English. In fact, often one of the first things they say when they perceive they are about to have to deal with a North American is along the lines of "I so sorry I no speak English How we can do this?" Then the client, excited that the doctor just spoke English, starts rattling off the reason for their visit in English, which is met with looks of great consternation. Following this, the doctor speaks to the client in Spanish who reacts similarly puzzled. (Then I step in to translate and all is well. But what happens when I am not there?)
We do have good medical care in Loja and if you show up at an emergency room unable to communicate, they will do their best to keep you alive (breathing, heart pumping, etc.). But it will be best if you can communicate the details about your situation so they can better assess what treatment you need.
But back to the original topic of finding English speakers in Loja. If you are going to live in Loja, you may find that you need to speak Spanish to do the day-to-day business of life (or hire a translator to go with you). This is something that is fundamentally different from living in a place in Ecuador with a large expat community where honest people will tell you that you really can get by with no Spanish at all. (Not that I recommend this even in those places because it is very difficult to ever feel at home in a place if you cannot communicate with the people that are from that place. We also learn a LOT about a culture by learning the spoken language of that culture.)
Tourists in Loja can get by with little to no Spanish. They love tourists here. They will figure out a way for you to get your needs met. When you are a tourist, your agenda is very different from living in a place and making it your home. And the city of Loja is so very pretty. If you want to really see Ecuador, you should strongly consider a visit to Loja, even if you do not speak the language well. Just be sure to get away from the most urban parts of the city if you want to experience the natural beauty here.
In summary, most people who visit Loja or try to make it their home will discover that there is very little English spoken in this city. Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing, it is what it is.
From my webpage on the issue of expats learning Spanish (or not), tips for learning Spanish for serious learners:
Recommendations for those who sincerely want to learn Spanish well enough to have meaningful conversations with native speakers:
1. Learn how to pronounce the letters of the Spanish alphabet, especially the vowels, from the very beginning. It is much easier to learn it correctly at the start than to fix ingrained bad habits later (although if you already have the bad habits, you still need to fix them). And if you can’t pronounce the letters right, no one will understand you. Except for the “rr” that people stress about so much. The “rr” is really not that important if you can pronounce the other letters.
2. Learn the rules for how to know which syllable to stress, what an accent mark means, and when to use accent marks or not.
3. Learn the verb conjugations. The book “501 Spanish Verbs” published by Barron’s, has an excellent beginning section that explains how to form each tense, when and how to use it and idiosyncrasies about the tense. Beyond that it is a great reference for irregular verbs. The authors of this book outline 14 verb tenses plus the imperative. This is not all the tenses, but if you learn these you’ll have a great foundation for learning how to speak, read, write and hear Spanish. Note: A lot of people think that learning all the verb conjugations is 95% of learning Spanish. It isn’t. It’s 10%. But it is crucial to learn it, like building the foundation of a house before building the rest.
4. Listen to Spanish as much as you can every day. Watch movies in Spanish, listen to conversations (on youtube if necessary), listen to the news in Spanish, find Spanish music that you like so you can print out the lyrics, learn them (and what they mean), and sing along.
5. Start trying to read Spanish every day . Look up the meanings of the words (and word groups… often the meaning changes based on which words are grouped together). An excellent resource is www.spanishdict.com for learning what things mean in context. (Type just one word into the SpanishDict search box to get the word meaning in various contexts. The other option is to type a group of words or sentences and then you get three versions from different machine translators, but all three of them might be wrong because English-Spanish translation is very context-sensitive and a machine often cannot differentiate.) In addition, www.wordreference.com can be very useful for looking up individual words and seeing what they mean based on context. This latter site also has conversation forums between native English and Spanish speakers that can be very helpful.
6. Find “teach-yourself-Spanish” books or internet sites that can help you progress faster. Duolingo.com (which is free) is great for beginners or as a review for more advanced learners. Personally I love the Practice Makes Perfect series of books. I have only used the advanced learner ones, but they have them for all levels. Once you get pretty far along there’s a series of three that should be done in this order: Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions (includes an excellent unit on “por vs. para”) by Dorothy Richmond, The Spanish Subjunctive Up Close by Eric Vogt and Advanced Spanish Grammar by Rogelio Alonso Vallecillos.
7. Work on building your Spanish vocabulary every day. You cannot speak or understand Spanish by just knowing vocabulary, but you also cannot speak or understand it if you DON’T know the vocabulary. It is most effective to learn a little bit each day (and keep reviewing what you’ve learned and practicing with it so it becomes ingrained).
If at this point if you are saying “oh my gosh, this is way too hard,” don’t worry. There’s nothing wrong with choosing NOT to learn a lot of Spanish and there are plenty of communities in Ecuador and around the world with medium to large English-speaking communities. The main thing is that you can enjoy where you live and be able to communicate well enough to be relaxed in your environment. Especially when people are creating a life in retirement. After a lifetime of hard work and plenty of stress, it would seem that none of us really needs more anxiety-producing living.
Click here to see more Misconceptions about Loja, Ecuador.
Click here to visit the All About Loja page, including pictures.
