I guess I get the humour of it, but is the point to say that if we don’t speak a language, we should never bother to try learning it?

Moot point.  Are you the mayor of a major city who is attempting in his own bizarre way to communicate to his constituents via your barely existent language skills? Nope.  Bloomberg could just step aside & let someone more fluent in the language translate what he says, but he doesn’t that is the crux of the joke here: It’s not his lack of language skills as much as his utter disconnect from what he is doing. His command of Spanish is reminiscent of someone who knows enough to tell their maid & butler what to do… ¿Comprende?

Maybe Bloomberg has realized by now his tweets cause his twitter follower’s nipples to explode with delight so he continues for this reason. In any case, while we can legitimately giggle, Bloomberg pushing on with trying to use his newly learned Spanish skills w/o worrying too much about how he sounds is the only was to really become capable with a new language.

Does that mean I will deserve to be mocked for trying?

if, over the course of multiple years of trying, you continue to gesticulate wildly while screaming, “The empty is yellow!”, then yes, you will be mocked.

I took Spanish for years, but it is very rusty now and I sound like Tarzan at best.  “Estoy caliente” is not a good way to comment on the weather.  My French is much worse, but I still harbor aspirations of immersing myself and getting better at both.  Does that mean I will deserve to be mocked for trying?

I’d like to find a guide to learning Latin American Spanish, but the search has yielded little.

Rañdom Ñ for the wiñ!   

What would be interesting is to track the most obvious gaffes and see if he fixes them in later postings.  He must know where he’s reaching for Spanish vocabulary and failing miserably.  If not, well then he needs to seek professional help.

What’s the going rate for conversational Spanish tutors?

I was told on multiple occasions, “let’s just use English” and I’d sheepishly reply “that’s probably fastest.”

edit: I guess someone must have done this before I got there: http://beyondteck.blogspot.com/2010/11/google-easter-egg-change-your-language.html

I took two years in high school and another in college, was the top of my class even, but it rapidly degraded once I stopped using it all the time.

It’s funny.  Not like riding a bike at all.  I can still write proficiently, but reading’s a lot slower, and speaking is out of the question for anything more complex than explaining who I am, what I do, where I want to go, how to get places, and what I want.  Anything beyond that and I sound like David Sedaris’ description of his French: like a hillbilly demon toddler.

I remember his example: “when I having of myself eight, the mouth man make me wore a fence in my head.”