So, how fast can one learn Spanish?

As I move down this continent and up in age groups I feel more pressure to learn Spanish as fast as possible. I’m beginning to find myself in more lofty conversations where the speed is faster and I trip on about 50% of the words that they’re saying (quite the jump from Special needs kids and toddlers). If I could read a transcript of the conversation I would probably understand more of it, but to just listen to the quick sounds, my brain has trouble keeping up with the foreign tongue.

Lima is fantastic. The air is warm, the ocean breeze is salty and the land is flat. Metropolitan activity excites the streets and the architecture reflects the developing economy. Southern California constantly pops into my head as I’m in a taxi driving along the wide stretches of highway and able to see for miles down the long stretches of avenues. The modern city lights tell me that it’s a few notches above Quito in development and I feel a few notches safer as well. My backpack is often worn on my back now.

Last night I spent some time on a rooftop with a mixture of Peruvians, ex-patriots (or, ex-pats: people who no longer live in their home country, all of which were English speakers) and lots of Pisco (a liquor made from grapes). English and Spanish competed for conversation the entire time. Since I was the worst player on the Spanish team, I wasn’t sure what to do. Self conscious of actually speaking my broken Spanish I just wanted to keep listening to the rapid conversation surrounding me, hoping that I would comprehend 75% of it eventually. I felt babied when a person would start speaking English with me, like when you can’t keep up with the person you’re running with so they run slower just for you. Kind in some ways, but no one likes to be pitied. Asking people to repeat their thoughts felt very dorky. In English it might sound like….

“Yeah, so I thought the movie was pretty cool but nothing to write home about.”

“Um… excuse me?”

“I thought the movie was cool but nothing special.”

“What? Sorry… more slowly, please?”

“Cool. The movie was cool. But not great.”

“Oh! Ok. Sure. Cool?”

“Good.”

“Oh! Ok. Nice.”

*Silence*

If you notice in that dialogue, it begins with two kinds of slang: “pretty cool” and “nothing to write home about”. If a fledgling English speaker didn’t know that “pretty” could be used for “very” or that “cool” could actually mean “good”… or, even worse, if the speaker couldn't pick up on the pronunciation of either, then the whole meaning has no chance of coming about. The listener wouldn’t even make it to the next idiom and would possibly only understand the word “home” and wonder, “Did you watch the movie in your home?” For the person speaking, who only made a casual comment about some half decent movie, all the repetition would feel kind of annoying leading to them avoiding the fledgling English speaker. This would reduce their interaction to smiles and facial gestures which only take you so far.

Hence, I smiled a lot last night and drank a few pisco sours with maracuya (passion fruit). Very tasty.

Prior to even arriving, I spent about 5 minutes misunderstanding my cab driver who was trying to tell me that I owed him a dollar because he had given me too much back in change. I remember my students telling me that cab drivers in NYC had been impossible to understand and now I fully comprehend why. It was the quick mumbling that really got me; I hadn’t had the same problem in Ecuador. The Peruvian accent is a bit faster and less clear. Unfortunately, I think Chile is going to be even worse.

Therefore, I am bolstering my Spanish skills as fast as I can. I was reading aloud to the maid here (yes, there is a MAID where I’m staying. Completely unheard of in the US, but not so out of the ordinary for a middle class family here) like a little kid to their mother.

La sala de espera de este doctor es muy grande porque trabaja solo.

The waiting room of this doctor is very big because he works alone.

Practice makes perfect… or makes more practice where language is concerned. Learning a language is never-ending which makes it forever fascinating but often frustrating. However, the feelings of stupidity and frustration haunt me, forcing me to absorb as much as possible as quickly as possible. I know that even at that it will still be slow-going, but I’m determined to press on!

When I got in the car after the rooftop I immediately spoke to the driver in Spanish and demanded that he play Spanish pop music only. Down the wide highway and passed the city lights we drove as I tried to kill all my English thoughts.

Hola, Espanol.