One of the more amusing side benefits to come out of my Wikipedia obsession of late is that I have a rekindled desire to improve on my craptacular knowledge of Spanish, if for no other reason than to be able to read and to occasionally improve on articles in the Spanish Wikipedia. In some ways, I’m quite excited at the thought of doing so; after all, Spanish syntax and grammar aren’t terribly different than that of English, and vocabulary is trivial to find when needed. However, the depressing reality remains that, even if I were to plunge into this effort, I wouldn’t be able to communicate in anything other than in a horribly stilted fashion. The immense number of everyday phrases that follow informal grammar rules and word usage/meanings that don’t precisely match up with dictionary definitions means that I’d have to immerse myself into Spanish for years (if not decades) to reach an approximately natural communication state.
In any case, if you know any languages besides English (at any level beyond the barest of competencies), you should consider contributing to Wikipedia in those languages. Chances are, any articles about places or people in your local area are either sorely lacking in content or nonexistent.
Recuérdate, la tortilla es la mejor parte.