just smile and nod

I’ve been studying Spanish online now for probably 6 or 7 years and if you compare my progress to how much Spanish a newborn in let’s say Madrid would have picked up in those same 6 or 7 years, I’m not doing a very good job. Still, when I hear people talking among themselves, I can sometimes get the gist of it, not so much knowing the language as being comfortable with just sort of barely vaguely understanding what the topic is, which might be the more useful skill. It’s pretty much how I get by in my native language.