Gettin' it Back - La Idioma

A aprender una idioma neuvo podria ser dificil. Aprenderlo una tiempo segundo podria ser frustrado.

To learn a new language can be difficult. To learn it a second time can be frustrating.

There was a time when I could have said that I could speak Spanish really well. That time is not now. That time was more than 12 years ago. After finishing a minor in Spanish and spending a quarter in Mexico in 1997 and a quarter in Costa Rica in 1998, I could carry on a conversation, not just about food and weather, with native Spanish speakers. I wasn’t nearly fluent, but I could butcher all the Spanish verb tenses pretty thoroughly. I could get “the ball over the net” most the time.

I visited Barcelona with my rag-tag group of friends during our backpacking trip around Europe in 1999. I called a tiny hostel to book us a room. I found a tiny pay phone in Warsaw and dialed up the place to make sure we got a nice room in the center of the action, in a place we could explore the city and not have to stumble too far home at night.

“Bon dia, quisiera reservar una cuarto por sinco personas, sinco hombres. Por favor.” I talked quietly into the phone. I was still a little nervous the communists might be tapping the phone. I stood in front of the giant wedding-cake structured government building in formerly communist Poland. “Lo siento, no tenia la tiempo a practicar mi Espanol por hace un ano.”

“Su Espanol es bueno, no,” the sweet lady on the other end of the line told me. We had a room. And it was even there when we arrived. Four years of Spanish didn’t let me down. Barcelona was awesome. We drank sangria, ate tapas on the avenue, and checked out the multiple museums. I was nervous about my Spanish. The Barcelonans really sounded differently with their ‘th’ for their ‘c.’ I did my best to lead our group through the city without problems.

On the day we left, one of my friends lost his camera in the hostel. He thought he left it in the washroom.

“You gotta go talk to the owner,” my friends told me. So I did. The owner and I talked for a good hour while we looked for my friends camera. She corrected me when I made mistakes and looked at me oddly when I pronounced ‘c’ like ‘s’ or ‘ll’ like ‘ya.’ But we became close.

We never found the camera, and when we left, she told me to have a safe trip back to Portugal, a safe trip home. I thought I heard her wrong and told her that Portugal was not on our route. I told her I was from the states.

“Creia que era Portuguesa - su pronunciacion,” she said. She thought I was Portuguese

I took it as a compliment. Not because I wasn’t proud to be from the states, but because she thought I was from Spain’s neighboring country. While I understand that Portuguese and Spanish are different, my 2004 honeymoon in Portugal taught me that, the languages are much closer than English and Spanish. It seems to me I butchered the language pretty well. I am not that good anymore, however, but for the last three months I have been trying to get back there. I’ve been studying everyday. Listening to Spanish in the car and talking to myself does not do as much as living with a family in Costa Rica or Mexico, but I’ll keep trying.

There will be stumbles. I will let you know about them.