text: okay.... i need a confidence booster. ....? i'm learning to speak spanish but i'm so afraid that people are going to laugh at me when i actually speak it. my boyfriend and his family all speak spanish (their native language) and i know they won't make fun of me if i mess up, but i am so parinoid. tell me i can do it! por favor :) i too started to learn spanish as a second language and i was terrified of making a mistake. i actually lived in venezuela for 8 months and hardly spoke any, mostly listened (i had a translator too). but then i came back to the states and started to just use the words that i had learned from listening. yes, it can be embarrasing, but the spanish culture is very different from american and they are very nice about helping you to learn. they are unlikely to laugh at you. they may laugh with you, but never at you. my grammar is still all messed up, but with practice, it is easy to learn more and more. and they are usually happy to help you learn more, or how to say it correctly.  (also watch it because a word in english can have many meanings and does not directly translate in spanish the same. for example they have no differientiation between "do" and "make" - they use the same basic word. what i mean is they tell you what it means, use it in that way, and dont assume that it has other definitions, as it would in english)  good luck!!!