A marketing intern at Deloitte spent eight hours a day riding the elevator up and down, staring out windows, refusing to perform busyness. Her colleagues were nervous. Why? Because a person who thinks starts questioning — and when you question, you stop following the herd. This week’s BlanBla email applies that logic to learning Spanish without grammar rules: most learners follow the herd (memorize, drill, wait until ready), and most learners still can’t speak. Time to ride a different elevator.
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The Original Email
This story is real. Y loca. Escucha.
There was a Finnish marketing intern at Deloitte.
Yes. That Deloitte. Suits. Slides. Meetings about meetings.
And this girl? She spent her days looking out the window.
Eight hours. Just staring.
Like a dramatic girlfriend waiting for her sailor boyfriend to return from the sea.
People were confused. Was she in love? Was she depressed? Was she crazy?
When they asked what she was doing, she said: “I’m thinking.”
Thinking. At work. Pensando. En el trabajo. ¡Qué fuerte, chica!
Then she started spending hours going up and down in the elevator.
Up. Down. Up. Down. Arriba y abajo. Sin parar. Non stop, la tía.
When someone asked her why, she said: “I get my best ideas from movement.”
El movimiento es importante para la creatividad.
People at the office were uncomfortable.
Not because she was bad. But because she wasn’t pretending.
She wasn’t sending late emails to look important.
She wasn’t creating useless meetings.
She wasn’t performing busyness.
She was just… thinking. Todo el día.
And that made people nervous. Muy nerviosa.
And that made her dangerous.
Because a person who thinks starts questioning.
And when you question, you stop following the herd.
Most people love the herd. The herd feels safe.
But what if the herd is walking in the wrong direction?
Si el rebaño se precipita down the cliff…
Cuando hablamos de español…
Following the herd in language learning looks like this:
Memorize grammar rules. Do exercises. Study verb tables.
Wait until you feel “ready” to speak.
That’s the herd. En la dirección incorrecta.
And most people still can’t speak.
Pensar diferente means asking: What actually works?
To speak Spanish, you need input. Repetition. Real speaking practice.
A system that makes your brain adapt naturally.
The Spanish Tribe is for people who don’t want to look busy.
They want to speak. Menos reglas. Más conversación.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” — Socrates
Mañana más. Besos y amor, Mónica.
Key Vocabulary
Arriba y abajo — Up and down. Directional pair. Others: adelante y atrás (forward and back), dentro y fuera (in and out), izquierda y derecha (left and right).
Sin parar — Non-stop, without stopping. Parar = to stop. Sin parar = without stopping. Versatile: habló sin parar (she talked non-stop), llovió sin parar (it rained without stopping).
¡Qué fuerte, chica! — Wow, that’s intense / Oh my God, girl! Qué fuerte = literally “how strong” but used as an exclamation for shocking or surprising things. Very Spanish.
El rebaño — The herd/flock. Seguir al rebaño = to follow the herd. Rebaño typically refers to sheep — perfect for the metaphor of passive, unthinking conformity.
Menos reglas. Más conversación. — Fewer rules. More conversation. Monica’s manifesto in four words. Menos (less/fewer) and más (more) are among the highest-frequency words in Spanish.
Pensar diferente — To think differently. Diferente here functions as an adverb (differently) — in informal Spanish, adjectives often replace adverbs. More natural than diferentemente.
What Actually Works
Linguist Stephen Krashen’s input hypothesis + output practice: you need large amounts of comprehensible input (reading, listening at your level) plus regular speaking practice. Grammar study is useful but secondary. The herd does it backwards — grammar first, speaking never. La Tribu does it the other way: conversation from day one, grammar explained only when needed.
Stop following the herd. Join La Tribu — or download the free Spanish book and start today.
— Monica Bernabe Perez