About

Who The Hell Is Amit?

Here's a man from the land of snake-charmers and billionaires, living in a modest two-room apartment in a suburb of what they call “The City of Dreams” a.k.a. Mumbai. Amit Schandillia is the name and this blog is my window to the passion called Spanish.

I have been fiddling with Spanish ever since the turn of the millennium when my sleepy little village had little access to the burgeoning world of Internet. My first date with Spanish was one of the most unremarkable coincidence. I was at a local store selling used books at throwaway prices and happened to pick this horribly dog-eared book teaching Spanish “in 30 days”.

More than a decade, one Latina fling, countless chats with some of the most wonderful men and women from both sides of the Atlantic, dozens of Spanish tomes, hundreds of experiments with several language-learning strategies, 5 day jobs, and two startups down the line, I am still very much in awe of the sheer command Spanish wields over almost a tenth of humanity! The richness of this language that is spoken in more than 20 countries is far from comprehensible in a single blog. After deciding to let go of my highly regimented 9-5 existence in the middle of 2012, I decided to pay a little tribute to the rich language. Until then, I had been working my butts off in almost half a dozen regular jobs, the last one as the Operations Manager for a billion-dollar American subprime mortgage conglomerate supervising a brain-damaging team of over a thousand Associates, Team Leads, and Assistant Managers. A stable job, a reputable title, an enviable job-description, and a more-than-handsome paycheck, all had to make way for a higher calling one day. This blog is what came out of that higher calling.

Today, Spanish is way more than just a language to me. To me, it’s a way of life, a whole new universe of mesmerizing people, cultures, lifestyles, and possibilities. Spanish is beautiful. Beautiful because of the colorful people who speak this language. Beautiful because of the unique regional flavors it takes wherever it is spoken. This blog is my attempt to capture some aspects of this beauty and share them with as many lives as it can possibly touch.

What The Hell Is Always Spanish?

Always Spanish was the logical next step after my first attempt at blogging in the fall of 2006. It was called Easiest Spanish and it started as a part-time hobby. The stuff was hillariously shabby, and amateur and the design was ridiculously lame for the serious blog it masquaraded as. Easiest Spanish was the result of an unemployment-related vacuum that was killing me both financially and socially. Anyways, Then came 2007 when I landed a good-enough job that paid my bills and kept me well-fed and I started drifting away from my blog. That was the end of what became my first ever attempt at blogging.

Fast forward to 2012. This time, it’s called Always Spanish and is, hopefully, a more serious avatar of Easiest Spanish. What’s different is that this time, it’s the work of a more matured and enlightened author who knows more about both blogging and Spanish than he did six years ago.

Always Spanish attempts to discuss everything I learned out of my experiments with Spanish over the last several years. Unconventional learning methodologies, street Spanish, tips and tricks on fluency and Spanish acquisition, simple techniques for Spanish immersion, learning optimization, interesting cultural notes, and tidbits on the regional variations of Spanish. This blog is an exercise geared toward giving you a wholesome, most fulfilling experience adding a whole new dimension to your learning. This blog talks about everything that worked for me and everything that didn’t. Always Spanish has some of the most organic yet controversial tips for learners of Spanish and the articles posted here are set to revolutionize the way you approach Spanish as a learner. This blog raises questions on some of the most fundamental language-learning dogmas propagandized by academicians around the world! Be prepared to radically change the way you learn languages and be prepared to attain an enviable fluency in Spanish without cramming a single rule of grammar from that book! If this blog were to be believed and so were the years of rock-solid research in this field by some of the most reputed linguists from around the globe, you can become fluent in Spanish (pretty much any language for that matter) just by watching movies and listening to music!


In short, while Always Spanish does not intend to replace your existing arsenal of Spanish-learning tools, it certainly serves to add a lot of passion, charm, and practical essence to your learning regimen. This is the blog that you would ideally pick if you wish to acquire Spanish instead of just learn it. This is the blog you would pick if you crave turning the ordeal of learning into the adventures of acquisition.

Welcome to Always Spanish. May your experience with Spanish be pleasant and full of new learnings. May Spanish open doors of possibilities and endless opportunities for you. And may Always Spanish succeed in its mission to serve you as the best alternative learning resource in the Web.

Wishing you luck!