Learn Mexican!

Part of writing a blog is doing keyword research, which often gives you surprising insight into what internet users actually search for.  While doing a bit of research the other day, I noticed that “learn mexican” received approximately 4,400 searches last month.  That’s right, 4,400 people are searching for information on how to learn Mexican.

As it turns out, this isn’t nearly as silly as it sounds.  “Don’t they know they speak Spanish in Mexico,” you might ask?  Well, I’d be willing to be most of those 4,400 people probably know that.  In reality, “mexican” is actually a perfectly-correct name for the dialect of Spanish spoken in Mexico.  It’s true the vast majority of Mexicans and other Spanish speakers will refer to it as “mexican Spanish” or some such variant, but it’s not difficult to imagine a situation where the term “mexican” might be used.  Mexican Spanish is quite a distinct dialect, after all, full of all kinds of special slang and expressions not used elsewhere.  Perhaps differentiating between Mexican Spanish and Chilean Spanish by calling it “mexican” isn’t such a bad idea after all.

So remember, next time you hear somebody say “they speak mexican in Mexico,” he’s technically right.  Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s not also an idiot.