The importance of local language in Belize

Wow. Talk about a cut-n-paste conversation starter. No basic research whatsoever.

Hello TextItalian,

This is not a cut and paste conversation starter. We at Expat.com often launch these threads to gather information from expats to later on share them to future Expats (To - Be)

If you don't want. to contribute, it is up to you.

Regards

Bhavna

Most of the questions can be answered by casual observation of the Web with a web search program. I'll add that it is not necessary to speak anything but English here, though to blend into the multiple subcultures it is useful to know, in order of importance: Spanish, Creol (Kriol), German, Garifuna, and Yucatec, Qichki, and Mopan Mayan. The Mennonites, who are a major sector of the Belize economy, speak standard ("high") German but amongst themselves is spoken "low German" (Plettdeutsch).

If you live in the jungle you had better be fluent in the languages of infrastructure, including solar or microhydro or wind generation of electric energy and its storage in NiFe (preferable) or LiFePO4 (suboptimal) batteries and know how to maintain (or have maintained) an inverter and solar charger. Also needed are building and repair of a pressurized water system and sewage system, and enough agronomy to grow food, including fruit trees. If you are not fluent in these technologies, you will need to be able to speak the "buzzwords" of them well enough to find help with them.

The most important language, however, is what is spoken by your body language, tone of voice, and projected attitude. A smile often speaks more than the words that are uttered.

My experience so far has been if I attempt to speak Spanish to a Belizean Mestizo person, they answer with "Good Morning Sir" and we stick to English from then on. In Spain and in Mexico I got along en Espanol, but Belizean Spanish speakers immediately decide their English is better than mi Espanol.

The only time language has been a barrier, I was with a friend who speaks Kriol and we encountered a very angry man who was having none of that. My hunch is if my friend weren't there, we'd have either finished in English or just parted ways because he was too pissed off (not at us) to deal with.

You will run into Guatemalans who haven't learned the language of business yet.

I did not have an issue with language until I went to Sarteneja, where Spanish is the primary language. A few of the locals did not speak English, but we managed to understand each other. The younger locals all know English.

I'm going to follow up on this. If you don't speak English, you'll need to have a translation app. You can download the whole dictionary of Google Translate, so it'll work even if you don't have data/cell.  I'm a native English speaker, so I never use in Belize, but it's been handy in non-English places. My hunch is if you speak Spanish, most places in Belize you'll be fine, too, bc so many folks are multi-lingual.