Clearly, I am living in a Spanish-speaking country. (Though I did have someone ask me, when they heard I was moving to Costa Rica, if CR “is a state like Puerto Rico.”) I started here equipped with the remnants of 3 years of high school Spanish, which means I could say “Buenos días” and “no comprendo español.”
Mi español es mucho mejor hoy. I have been writing the majority of my work e-mails in Spanish, and I some work conversations (and most lunches) are in Spanish.
To me, learning Spanish has been productive (clearly) and an interesting time of self-observation. I can feel my brain on fire after a half-day of really engaging in Spanish. This is mostly because when I’m switching back and forth, or have only been speaking/listening to Spanish for a few minutes, I still have a running conversation with myself in English going on in the background – frequently about my Spanish, ironically. After really whipping my brain into focusing on Spanish for a while, this starts to die down.
I have realized how incredibly important context is to my understanding. I am pretty good in work conversations, or when the conversation is about something that is going on around us, or when reading closed captioning on a TV show. My brain is looking for words in a certain “quadrant,” and so it finds them much faster and my comprehension is better.
The toughest conversations for me are at meals, because the conversations naturally wander around to anything. The lack of context, combined with the frequent changes of direction, leaves me stranded. The perverse impact is that I am less engaged in the conversation because I’m more behind, and the less engaged I am (i.e. the less I am talking) the more difficult it is for me to understand. This is, again, because of context: if I say something or ask a question, I have a pretty good idea of where the conversation is going immediately after.
I also don’t know the flow of a typical conversation well enough in Spanish to fill in the blanks if I miss a word. This means that it is very hard for me to understand Spanish in a loud environment; I already don’t understand all the words, so if I can’t precisely hear the conversation, my mind can’t fill in the blanks to form a logical sentence.
However, even if I don’t understand, I am dangerously good at faking it. By mirroring the attitude of the conversation, nodding along sometimes, and repeating a key phrase here and there that I recognize (“En el parque?”), I can slide under the radar. Until someone asks me a question. In a conversation like this where I’m not actually engaged, I’m 30 seconds behind anyway, so when someone asks me a question there is usually a long pause until I realize they asked me a question and are staring at me. I then have two options: give a noncommittal answer and see if that suffices for them to carry on or admit defeat.
Some other funny Spanish stories:
To me, learning Spanish has been productive (clearly) and an interesting time of self-observation. I can feel my brain on fire after a half-day of really engaging in Spanish. This is mostly because when I’m switching back and forth, or have only been speaking/listening to Spanish for a few minutes, I still have a running conversation with myself in English going on in the background – frequently about my Spanish, ironically. After really whipping my brain into focusing on Spanish for a while, this starts to die down.
I have realized how incredibly important context is to my understanding. I am pretty good in work conversations, or when the conversation is about something that is going on around us, or when reading closed captioning on a TV show. My brain is looking for words in a certain “quadrant,” and so it finds them much faster and my comprehension is better.
The toughest conversations for me are at meals, because the conversations naturally wander around to anything. The lack of context, combined with the frequent changes of direction, leaves me stranded. The perverse impact is that I am less engaged in the conversation because I’m more behind, and the less engaged I am (i.e. the less I am talking) the more difficult it is for me to understand. This is, again, because of context: if I say something or ask a question, I have a pretty good idea of where the conversation is going immediately after.
I also don’t know the flow of a typical conversation well enough in Spanish to fill in the blanks if I miss a word. This means that it is very hard for me to understand Spanish in a loud environment; I already don’t understand all the words, so if I can’t precisely hear the conversation, my mind can’t fill in the blanks to form a logical sentence.
However, even if I don’t understand, I am dangerously good at faking it. By mirroring the attitude of the conversation, nodding along sometimes, and repeating a key phrase here and there that I recognize (“En el parque?”), I can slide under the radar. Until someone asks me a question. In a conversation like this where I’m not actually engaged, I’m 30 seconds behind anyway, so when someone asks me a question there is usually a long pause until I realize they asked me a question and are staring at me. I then have two options: give a noncommittal answer and see if that suffices for them to carry on or admit defeat.
Some other funny Spanish stories:
- I was having a conversation with a driver, and he used “bling bling” at one point. If you hear “bling bling” in the middle of a Spanish conversation, it’s pretty funny.
- I hadn’t heard in the news that a new Pope had been selected. That morning in the office, I was listening to the conversation and heard lots of “papa” combined with “Viejo,” “vuelos,” “Maradona,” etc. I finally asked what was going on, because the idea of an old, traveling potato with some connection to Maradona had me thrown. It turns out that the Pope is “el papa” (vs. “la papa” for potato)
- I find it hard when people throw in English words in the middle of their Spanish. They think they are helping me out, but my brain is furiously searching the Spanish archives to match words. There is frequently a delay before I realize someone said something in English, because I am trying to figure out what “yellow” means in Spanish.
- If I have been in Spanish mode for a while, I sometimes have trouble pulling up English words – e.g. if I hit a roadblock and want to say, “how do you say X in Spanish,” I may have trouble remembering what X is in English.
My Spanish is coming along, but learning a new language... is easier said than done.
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