Why Spanish (or just about any other foreign language) can be hard to understand

So you've studied your Spanish, and on a visit to Mexico, for example, you finally get a chance to put your basic Spanish to work. ¿Qué tipos de jugos hay?, you ask the server at breakfast, what kinds of juice do you have? Simple question, so surely you'll understand the answer that comes back, right?

If you're like most of us, possibly not — even if you know all the individual words in the answer. That's because of a common practice grammarians call elision — running words and sentences together so it's difficult to tell where one word ends and the next begins. Learn more...