[YEW HUNG LAM]

In my opinion, anyone who plans to take up residency in Panama will need to know some Spanish to be somewhat comfortable with day-today life.

I feel that IL should not perpetuate the myth that one can manage without knowing any Spanish within Panama City in its reports and articles. I have found this to be false.

Even though I started to study Spanish in 2005, I still got frustrated trying to communicate with the locals on my 3 trips to Panama thus far because my Spanish vocabulary failed me and listening to Spanish is so much more difficult than reading it. Also, classroom Spanish and conversational Spanish in real life are totally different.  I know that there are those on the Yahoo Groups forums on Panama who boast that they had lived in Panama for years and have neither bothered nor felt the need  to learn Spanish, but that is not my experience.

You would think that at least someone in a bank would know how to speak English, but that is not the case. I walked into the Citibank branch in Multiplaza and had to open my bank accounts totally in Spanish. I suspect that the bank officer who attended to me knew some English, but claimed ignorance just for the joy of putting me through the wringer.

Yes, most of the more senior lawyers speak English, but the junior associates usually do not. When the more senior lawyer handling your visa application is too to busy to accompany you to Immigration, you get assigned a junior associate who do not speak English.

My point is that one cannot survive without making the effort to learn to communicate in the local language.

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