Photo by lisihoff
Yes, I speak Spanish every day. Yes, I use it in a business and personal context. Yes, I feel muy cómoda switching to Spanish unexpectedly.
So, why do I feel like my Spanish skills have stagnated?
When I find myself explaining how to get past “the learning plateau” to a tutoring client, I am always reminded of my own relationship to the Spanish language. My job is to help others overcome that period during a course, test preparation, or language acquisition in which things start to feel boring and impossible. With continued effort, things will naturally move in an upward direction again. Sometimes, I feel guilty that I don’t make the time to apply this philosophy to my own life.
As my son’s Spanish vocabulary está fomentando exponentially, mine is barely surviving. I pick up slang vocabulary from the few Spanish-speaking friends I have, and take note of words that I knew but forgot every time I see them written on a sign or in a book. Still, I often wish I had the time/motivation to read and listen to more Spanish. Informal talk radio and conversations that I overhear can help, but they don’t offer the range of syntax to which I would like to be exposed.
Invariably, after each exchange in Spanish – even just a quick answer to my son or an unimportant text message – I think of a “better” way to say what I just said. Maybe it’s my perfectionist streak, but I am constantly criticizing my conscious and unconscious choices. Admittedly, I do this in English too, but only for more permanent things (such as every blog post I write!) and in a much less anxious manner.
Along with a stressful level of self-critique, bilingualism compounds envy. I am jealous of all the people I know who can so effortlessly transition from one language to the other in any context, when I only have that luxury about half the time. While I know that those who are bilingual from birth also have to face the dynamism of language, I wonder what it feels like to have words just fall out of one’s mouth instead of having to endure a lengthy consultation (and sometimes negotiation) with the brain first.
If it were anything other than speaking Spanish, I would likely have given up by now. But as parents, you all understand as well as I do that children make us question our assumptions about pretty much everything. Communication is such an essential part of parenting, and sometimes, having to think about what I say before I say it is a gift. It provides a mirror unlike any other. My exact word choice, in either language, directly affects my son’s reaction. Every parent should be so lucky as to be forced to pause during every parent-child interaction and think:
¿Cómo lo debo decir?
I identify with every word you said. My Spanish has been growing by leaps and bounds this past summer since I committed to speaking to my kids in only Spanish, but I envy so much the people who don’t have to struggle to find the exact word/phrase they’re looking for, instead of settling on something that means approximately the same. Sometimes it feels like pedaling a bike that has been put into the wrong gear.
I’m slightly comforted by the fact that more and more often, when I don’t know a word and I ask my husband, (a native Spanish speaker), what it means, he doesn’t know either. Of course, this could mean one of two things. Either I am entering the territory of some heavy duty vocabulary that is only found in great literature —- or my husband is losing his Spanish. (Then again, it could be a little of both.)
“Every parent should be so lucky as to be forced to pause during every parent-child interaction and think:
¿Cómo lo debo decir? ”
That is so right on! Don’t be so hard on yourself. It can happen in both languages, like you said. I’m a native Spanish speaker, but I’ve been in the States so long that I had forgotten A LOT of vocabulary. It is only since having my kiddos that I’ve gotten a lot back. But there are still SOOO many words I don’t know in Spanish. For example, how do you say, “fishing lure”??? I just tell my kiddos that I don’t know the word in Spanish, we’ll have to find out somehow.
I think you’re awesome for using ML@H even though you’re not a native speaker! Keep up the good work.
Wow, I can identify so much with what you are saying, Chelsea. I started speaking Spanish only in my 30′s. I can say I’m “very fluent”, but it’s not quite the same as people who are bilingual and the words just fall out of their mouths as you say. In addition, as I’ve aged I’ve tried to develop a habit of more carefuly considering my words, to speak always without wounding the other person — and that’s a tall order. In fact, nobody in my husband’s family knew me back when I used to be a monolingual and “shooting straight from the hip”. I think everyone who only knows the older (maybe wiser?) Spanish-speaking me has simply decided I’m a little slow. My husband told me one time, when I was standing there, trying desperately to think what I’d say and then how to say it, “pareces pescado muerto”… I looked like a glassy-eyed fish that died with its mouth open. Ha ha ha. Well, I don’t care. My son, unlike me, is going to be bilingual for real! I just try to remember that from his point of view, having a mom who is sometimes just a tad slow speaking isn’t strange at all, it’s just how I am, and I rather doubt he would trade me…
I’ve been in this situation also. And then just one day I decided I had the “who really cares” mentality and I just jumped in. Over the years I have realized that I have certain gifts that maybe native Spanish speakers might not necessarily have. I work with a ton of people who are highly educated in Spanish, yet I’ve started to notice that they come to me when they need their writing edited for Spanish accents, spelling, etc. And sometimes it’s funny that I am correcting them when it comes to writing because I know what sounds academic to me, and vice versa- I lean on them when it comes to assistance with oral language. I think that this is the block that keeps many of us from progressing to achieving high levels of fluency in a second language. I’m of the persuasion that language is beautiful and who cares if it’s not perfect! And if there are picky people who criticize me-well, I don’t need to be speaking with them!!