CRANBERRY TWP — Even after living in Lima, Peru, for nearly 50 years, Joni Pun said she thinks she would lose her Spanish fluency if not for the Spanish conversation meetings at the Cranberry Township Giant Eagle cafe she attends every Thursday morning.

The Cranberry Township resident has gone to these meetings, as well as monthly Spanish conversation hours at the Zelienople Area Public Library, for years. She credits these opportunities with keeping her brushed up on her Spanish speaking skills.

Calling these gatherings “meetings” is a bit of a stretch. Pun said they are more like “friendly meetups,” where the attendees talk about their lives, personal stories and recent happenings, but just use Spanish to converse rather than English.

“Once you've got the languages, you kind of gravitate toward speaking it as well and watching TV with it,” she said.

Pun and Michele Sebastian, of Cranberry Township, are longtime attendees of the local meetups. Sebastian said she was there at the start, when a man named Harry Webb got a group together to have conversations in Spanish at the Cranberry Township Municipal Center in 2001.

While the longtime attendees of the Spanish-speaking meetings are able to have full conversations completely in Spanish, Pun and Sebastian emphasized that the groups are also meant to help people practice the language. So, anyone can attend without having a background in the language.

That’s the story of Chuck Munshaw. He comes from Pittsburgh to the Giant Eagle to work on his Spanish, after not learning it until his adulthood.

“Spanish is a two-way street — you learn how to speak it and then you learn how to receive it,” Munshaw said at a Thursday, March 26 meeting at the Cranberry Township Giant Eagle. “I usually just listen.”

But the other attendees of the March 26 session said Munshaw’s Spanish has improved since he started coming. The longtime attendees affectionately refer to him as “Carlos.”

Although Munshaw considers himself a beginner, the other members said they all have to keep using the language or else risk losing their grasp on it. Sebastian said that over the years, the meetings have been attended by native Spanish speakers.

The people have hailed from different countries, and their dialects differed in distinct ways.

Pun said that Spanish slang and even words describing certain things are different in Peru, South America than they are in places like Puerto Rico or Spain.

“It’s different depending on where you are,” Sebastian said.

Each person who entered the cafe March 26 greeted the rest of the gang with an “hola,” followed by additional conversational formalities like “como estas,” meaning “how are you?”

The conversation continued on between different people in the group, and some of the people brought cookies or treats to share with the others, which also spurred conversation.

Even though the people at the meeting consider themselves fluent in the Spanish language, they said conversing with different people helps strengthen their grasp on the meaning of the words. Plus, if a newcomer visits one of these meetings, they can hear what it sounds like for people to speak to one another in Spanish, and ease into the language instead of diving into the dialect.

Bob Sebastian, Michele’s husband, who has also attended the group for years, said changing conversation topics — and emerging slang used by Spanish dialects — help keep the meeting regulars sharp.

“The objective, of course, is to get together and practice the language and get educated on the culture,” Bob Sebastian said. “We really like to be here to speak with people of all levels.”

Bob Sebastian said people serious about learning the language will likely have to practice on their own, too.

“I would suggest getting a Spanish dictionary for anyone who wants to learn, because within it are examples of using a word,” Bob Sebastian said.

Glenna Powers, of Wexford, said she keeps in touch with her now-friends in the group mainly by coming to the weekly meeting. Another longtime Spanish speaker, who also previously taught the language, Powers said the conversations are personable and not just for keeping up with the language skills.

“We talk about anything and everything,” she said. “We start somewhere and go somewhere else,” she added about the conversation.

And while the Giant Eagle cafe and Zelienople Area Public Library each have Spanish speaking meetings, it’s not the only language that people convene around in the southwestern Butler County area.

Michele Sebastian is in several groups that practice speaking languages, including French, Italian and Mandarin. Powers, too, attends the French speaking group in the Barnes & Noble in Cranberry Township.

She even joked that — just like any multilingual person might do — she and Michele Sebastian have conversations that include words from several dialects.

“Sometimes we’ll all be speaking and a French word pops in,” Powers said.

The Spanish speaking group meets at 10 a.m. every Thursday in the Giant Eagle in Cranberry Township, 20111 Route 19, Cranberry Township.

The Spanish conversation hour begins at 6 p.m. the fourth Thursday of each month at the Zelienople Area Public Library, 227 S. High Street, Zelienople.