Learning Spanish For Real
Some say “Necessity is the mother of invention.” If by invention one means creating something new in one’s life, then it’s true for me. Right now I’m working on inventing myself as a competent Spanish speaker because I need to in order to responsibly do my job.
When I took “interim” responsibility for overseeing the Quetzal Education and Research Center, I could, in Spanish, get around town, order a meal, be polite. I had the vocab of a wee baby.
Like many people, sadly, I took introductory Spanish in high school, and because I was so damned scared of looking like an idiot/not being perfect I did the dumbest thing. I didn’t take advantage of all the free resources in the environment around me. My little west Texas high school was 50% Hispanic. If I had just enlisted a few acquaintances to help me learn I might have gotten pretty far, and made some better friends. But, being an insecure loner, well, I blew that opportunity.
I retook elementary Spanish in college to meet my foreign language requirement. In graduate school I slinked through intermediate Spanish. In both cases I cheated myself. I approached the language as an academic matter rather than a practical one. So, I didn’t really learn much beyond getting decent with the necessary patterns to do well on the exams.
Now, though, I’m paying for squandering my opportunities. While overseeing QERC is only a small part of my responsibilities, I’m in communication with our Spanish-speaking employee on site most days through WhatsApp texting. I’m reading and writing emails. I’m paying bills online. When I’m there I’m speaking and listening to people in the community. I’m explaining the symptoms of a broken washing machine to a guy in a parts house and buying a new part. It’s all necessary to do the job.
And, I’m still a toddler. According to Lingvist’s placement test, I know about 500 words. The average 18-month-old recognizes about 260 words, whereas preschool-aged children recognize between 1,000 and 10,000 words (Fenson et al., 2007; Shipley & McAfee, 2015). As someone who was good with words and strong in my native language vocabulary, I’m a little embarrassed by this. Why? I don’t know. Could be that I don’t like to look or be foolish? At least that!
But, you know what who’s be even more foolish? Yep, you guessed it – not looking like a fool by not learning Spanish. So, I’m practicing practically every day. Fifteen to twenty minutes of app based learning and then some texting back and forth as it comes up keeps me in daily touch with the language. And I read a bit in a Spanish language book or a journal article at least one time each week. I find the history books and journals easier because I know the terminology (perhaps I know more than 500 words in other contexts).
Am I going to become fluent in Spanish? Probably not in this life. But I intend to be able to knock about in it. That’ll have to do.