As I Was Saying . . .
I love living here in Spain. It’s beautiful. It’s historic. The people are friendly and warm. The lifestyle is laid back. There are interesting things to do and unusual things to see every day. The shopping is great fun. The food is delicious. In so many ways, this is a marvelous vacation.
Sometimes, however, it is exhausting. It’s not just the fact that we walk everywhere we go – sometimes five or eight miles in a day. It’s not just that we live on the side of a mountain (well, just a really steep hill, but it feels like a mountain some days). Sometimes, simply living here wears me out. It has to do with having to speak a foreign language every day.
I guess I don’t really have to speak Spanish all the time, but I try to. Partly that’s because John is a hard guy when it comes to things like living the language – he does it, and he encourages the students to do it; that’s how you learn to speak a foreign language well – by doing it every day, all the time, even when it’s hard. So we speak Spanish in the streets and we even speak it in our apartment most of the time. Every once in awhile, at the end of a long day, our tongues are too fatigued to crank out any more espanol, and our brains are spent from the energy exerted.
That’s what wears me out. In English, I’m a talkative kinda gal. I have to watch myself so I don’t dominate conversations. I always have a story to tell, an analogy to make, a metaphor to engage. I can be a real boor sometimes. Not here, though. I have absolutely no time or energy to think about symbolism and complex conceptual connections. I’m way too busy trying to remember the right conjugation for the conditional usage of querer, and making sure my concordancia (agreement) is correct – is a pencil masculine or feminine, anyway? Every sentence is a mental workout.
The other day, for example, I needed to pick up a box from the post office (correos) so I could mail our daughter’s birthday present. What she wanted most of all was a supply of chuches from Chuchelandia, a candy store in town. Mostly she wanted gummi-style strawberries and these delicious fruit-flavored, cream-filled tubey things that I can’t explain any more than just to say they’re amazing and addicting. We bought her a fair amount of candy and a great jacket and a stack of pasminas, or scarves, for her to share with her roommates.
In order to get this box, I needed to find out which window in the post office sold them, and then I needed to know the price and the weight allowed, and the cost of mailing one kilo, or two, or three, depending on how much candy we ended up sending. Then I needed to find out what I needed to do to pack the box. Back home in the states, this is a two minute job which requires no mental energy whatsoever. Here, I spent the entire twenty-minute walk to the post office rehearsing my questions, and re-evaluating my sentence structure, grammar and word choice. Waiting in line I mentally practiced the combination of words and hand-waving that was bound to be involved.
And that wasn’t the hard part. The really scary thing about speaking a foreign language, especially if your pronunciation is good enough that people think you might know what you’re doing is that people think that you know what you’re doing, and then they talk back to you. Terrifying. And since they think you understand, they don’t talk slowly for you. Herein lies the danger of reciting phrases you’ve been practicing over and over. Once I asked my question, my exercise in truly active listening began. I knew to watch their lips carefully and listen for key words. Dollar (or Euro) amounts are very important. Numbers of any kind are key – times, weights, etc.
In emergency communication disasters, I have learned to swallow my pride and use the pathetic “I’m-a-stupid-foreigner” look (much like the “deer-in-the-headlights” look back on the other side of the pond). That one usually gets them to slow down a little and reduce their answers to short, simple words. While this method is effective on a basic communication level, it is emotionally and verbally unsatisfying, and usually leaves me feeling just a little cheap and tawdry when all is said and done.
My point is that every day, every sentence I speak requires thought, planning, and revision. Instantly. It’s exhausting. All day long, even for the simplest of tasks like buying mandarine oranges and enormous red peppers from the local market. I know I can get the job done by holding up a couple of fingers, waving my hands a little, pointing, and calling out a number or two, but the whole point of our experience here is to improve my Spanish, not just maintain the status quo. If I were looking for easy, I could take John with me everywhere and make him do all the talking. That’s what I did the first time we lived in Spain, thirty years ago. Our marriage survived it, but I’m not going back there again . . .
The thing is, when I do pull it off . . . when I get the sentence right, and I don’t mess up the concordance, and all the feminines are feminine and all the plurals are plural, and I even manage to speak with a little gracia (meaning grace, not thanks), it’s hard to describe the sense of satisfaction and confidence I feel. When I can carry on a real conversation with a friend, or when I manage to make a play on words or tell a joke that actually works in Spanish and makes someone laugh, my heart just soars. I’m communicating, and it makes me feel connected to this world. It makes me feel alive, even if I do need a nap when I get home.
Sometimes, however, it is exhausting. It’s not just the fact that we walk everywhere we go – sometimes five or eight miles in a day. It’s not just that we live on the side of a mountain (well, just a really steep hill, but it feels like a mountain some days). Sometimes, simply living here wears me out. It has to do with having to speak a foreign language every day.
I guess I don’t really have to speak Spanish all the time, but I try to. Partly that’s because John is a hard guy when it comes to things like living the language – he does it, and he encourages the students to do it; that’s how you learn to speak a foreign language well – by doing it every day, all the time, even when it’s hard. So we speak Spanish in the streets and we even speak it in our apartment most of the time. Every once in awhile, at the end of a long day, our tongues are too fatigued to crank out any more espanol, and our brains are spent from the energy exerted.
That’s what wears me out. In English, I’m a talkative kinda gal. I have to watch myself so I don’t dominate conversations. I always have a story to tell, an analogy to make, a metaphor to engage. I can be a real boor sometimes. Not here, though. I have absolutely no time or energy to think about symbolism and complex conceptual connections. I’m way too busy trying to remember the right conjugation for the conditional usage of querer, and making sure my concordancia (agreement) is correct – is a pencil masculine or feminine, anyway? Every sentence is a mental workout.
The other day, for example, I needed to pick up a box from the post office (correos) so I could mail our daughter’s birthday present. What she wanted most of all was a supply of chuches from Chuchelandia, a candy store in town. Mostly she wanted gummi-style strawberries and these delicious fruit-flavored, cream-filled tubey things that I can’t explain any more than just to say they’re amazing and addicting. We bought her a fair amount of candy and a great jacket and a stack of pasminas, or scarves, for her to share with her roommates.
In order to get this box, I needed to find out which window in the post office sold them, and then I needed to know the price and the weight allowed, and the cost of mailing one kilo, or two, or three, depending on how much candy we ended up sending. Then I needed to find out what I needed to do to pack the box. Back home in the states, this is a two minute job which requires no mental energy whatsoever. Here, I spent the entire twenty-minute walk to the post office rehearsing my questions, and re-evaluating my sentence structure, grammar and word choice. Waiting in line I mentally practiced the combination of words and hand-waving that was bound to be involved.
And that wasn’t the hard part. The really scary thing about speaking a foreign language, especially if your pronunciation is good enough that people think you might know what you’re doing is that people think that you know what you’re doing, and then they talk back to you. Terrifying. And since they think you understand, they don’t talk slowly for you. Herein lies the danger of reciting phrases you’ve been practicing over and over. Once I asked my question, my exercise in truly active listening began. I knew to watch their lips carefully and listen for key words. Dollar (or Euro) amounts are very important. Numbers of any kind are key – times, weights, etc.
In emergency communication disasters, I have learned to swallow my pride and use the pathetic “I’m-a-stupid-foreigner” look (much like the “deer-in-the-headlights” look back on the other side of the pond). That one usually gets them to slow down a little and reduce their answers to short, simple words. While this method is effective on a basic communication level, it is emotionally and verbally unsatisfying, and usually leaves me feeling just a little cheap and tawdry when all is said and done.
My point is that every day, every sentence I speak requires thought, planning, and revision. Instantly. It’s exhausting. All day long, even for the simplest of tasks like buying mandarine oranges and enormous red peppers from the local market. I know I can get the job done by holding up a couple of fingers, waving my hands a little, pointing, and calling out a number or two, but the whole point of our experience here is to improve my Spanish, not just maintain the status quo. If I were looking for easy, I could take John with me everywhere and make him do all the talking. That’s what I did the first time we lived in Spain, thirty years ago. Our marriage survived it, but I’m not going back there again . . .
The thing is, when I do pull it off . . . when I get the sentence right, and I don’t mess up the concordance, and all the feminines are feminine and all the plurals are plural, and I even manage to speak with a little gracia (meaning grace, not thanks), it’s hard to describe the sense of satisfaction and confidence I feel. When I can carry on a real conversation with a friend, or when I manage to make a play on words or tell a joke that actually works in Spanish and makes someone laugh, my heart just soars. I’m communicating, and it makes me feel connected to this world. It makes me feel alive, even if I do need a nap when I get home.
You are completely delightful! I appreciate living a tiny bit vicariously through you. I can taste the candies, see the beauty, and imagine the brain strain. -- I wish you'd write more often. :)
ReplyDeleteHeard that! (As Amber would say - I'm trying to be one of the cool kids). While I feel like I totally understand you, I know it's very different for us. I only have a few hours a week, and you live it. You are amazing though and your communicative skills in Spanish far exceed mine... and I'm the one with the degree. Good for you though! Andale Mami!
ReplyDeleteI'm just exhausted reading about speaking in spanish... just another gift to add to the wicked talented Linda Chaston. We miss you back here!
ReplyDelete