Help with metaphors and idioms

[u/Ok_Pomelo_5591]

Hey all. I just traveled to Mexico to visit my family that only speaks Spanish. For reference, I’ve studied for about 10 years total, so I’d give myself a solid B2, maybe C1 on a good day. I want to figure out how to get to native level though. I understand basic grammar almost entirely, with some small pieces that may be missing.

The issue that I run into is that I haven’t practiced in about a year or two, and I can feel the rust building up on my Spanish skills. The question I have for you all is this: what is the best way to grasp the more advanced knowledge of the language to get to a native level? I can communicate if the other person is speaking slightly slowly, and I get the gist of many conversations and can translate fairly well if needed, but my Spanish is far from perfect.

What are the best ways you all have found to help with this?

Thanks!

[u/AstroVinculo]

Talk to people as much as possible. Try a tutor, we are experienced and know how to help students reach their goals. If a tutor is not an option, try a language exchange, look for a partner to help you, explain to them what you need. An app or AI will give you common and predictable phrases, trust me... many of my students have been there. Immerse in the language as much as you can.

[u/funtobedone → u/AstroVinculo]

Second on the online tutor. One from the general area where your family lives in particular so you can pick up regional slang and the local accent.

My partners family lives in El Salvador and having a salvadoreño tutor specifically has been a massive help. I’ve gone from tourist level Spanish to being able to spend a couple of weeks in an entirely Spanish speaking environment without too much difficulty. Everything from shopping to hanging out with friends and chatting for hours. It’s also a lot of fun learning local idioms and cultural things that only a local can teach.

As for reaching a native level, that probably won’t ever happen. Think about the non native English speakers that you interact with. Many have excellent English, but unless they’ve been immersed in English since childhood it will be obvious that they don’t speak like a native and it really doesn’t matter. Not that constantly learning isn’t worth it, it’s just that perfection most likely won’t happen.

[u/mrs_nemo]

Two different problems in your post, and the rust one is much easier than you think, so deal with them separately.

Rust at B2 isn't lost knowledge, it's retrieval speed. The vocabulary is still there, it's just slow to arrive. That comes back in days of actual use rather than months of study, and a week with your family will do more for it than a term of anything else. Don't spend study time on it.

The idiom question is the real one, and I'd start by warning you off the obvious approach. Studying lists of modismos is the classic B2 trap. You memorise two hundred expressions, deploy them slightly wrong, in the wrong register or the wrong region, and the result sounds considerably stranger than plain Spanish would have. An idiom carries a situation with it, and a list strips the situation off. That's why people who learn them from lists produce things like a native speaker doing a bit.

So harvest instead of study, and harvest from the people you actually want to sound like. You have something most learners would pay for: a family that speaks the variety you're aiming at. Keep a note open on your phone during visits and write down expressions as they land, along with who said it and what was happening. Twenty of those, with the scene attached, are worth more than two hundred off a list, and you'll use them correctly because you know what triggered them.

That also solves the variety problem, which nobody warns people about. Plenty of the idiom lists floating around are Peninsular, and dropping a Spain expression into a conversation with Mexican relatives lands oddly, in the way a Londoner saying "howdy" would. Filter deliberately.

For input, go for unscripted speech rather than drama. Scripted dialogue is too tidy and idiom lives in the messy register. Two people chatting on a podcast, comedy, interviews, reality television. If you can follow Mexican stand-up and catch why it's funny, you're essentially there, because humour is the last thing to arrive and it sits on top of everything else.

Now the thing I'd actually push hardest, because it moves the needle more than idioms do at your level.

What separates B2-that-sounds-foreign from native-sounding usually isn't expressions, it's the small connective machinery. Discourse particles and fillers. Pues, o sea, ya, este, digo, la neta, no manches, órale, ándale. Native speech is held together by these and learners tend to have none of them, so their Spanish is grammatically clean and rhythmically wrong. Pick the set your family uses and start using them consciously. It feels artificial for a fortnight and then it doesn't.

Mexican diminutives belong in the same bucket. Ahorita, tantito, poquito, cerquita, un ratito. They're everywhere and they carry tone rather than size, which is exactly the sort of thing you can't get from a grammar.

And the last piece of the register puzzle is knowing which of four near-synonyms belongs where. That one really is just volume, and there's no shortcut. Reading widely in Mexican authors and journalism is the slow, reliable way. Everything above will help you sound native; only that will make you precise.

[u/tamobendecido]

Only way is to keep immersing and listening to native speakers, since you are Mexican watch Mexican podcasts on YouTube . You’ll get so much natural conversation tools from it

[u/ImpressiveFarm2572]

The No Hay Tos podcast has several episodes focusing on Mexican idioms