I’ve had a few people ask me why I’m taking Spanish classes if I already know and speak Spanish well. The simple answer is because Spanish is not simple. I’ve been studying for 7 years and I’m still not completely confident (or fluent) speaking or writing it. So I thought it might be kinda fun to share with you the things I love (and sometimes hate) most about this beautiful language.
I’ll start with a story that happened to me earlier this year. A little while ago, I had a sinus infection. I’m used to getting them so I prepared myself to go to the pharmacy and get the medicine I needed by looking up how to say “sinus” and found the word “senos”. “Perfect” I thought, “I’m gonna go show ‘em what I’ve got and get the medicine I need! I’m so fluent, being able to communicate my sickness.” I go downstairs and talk with my aunt, telling her “I’m going to go to pharmacy; I have a sinus infection (tengo una infección en mis senos)”. She sent me on my way. I go into the pharmacy down the street and try to explain that I have a sinus infection telling the women that no, I don’t have a head cold, but something different. “Si no es el gripe pero una infección en mis senos.” She tried to give me medicine for the cold, but I was on my way to my leaders’, Paul and Nydia’s, house and just decided to ask them what they might use when I got there. So I arrived at their house and there was a new couple I hadn’t met yet. I walked in and explained to them “Oh estoy enferma con una infección en mis senos y no quiero saludarles bien, pero mucho gusto.” “I’m sorry! I’m sick with a sinus infection and I don’t want to greet you guy properly because I don’t want to get you sick, but nice to meet you.” My leader Nydia immediately asks me “Where did you find that word for sinus?” “Well I looked it up in WordReference. Why?” “Riley is better to say “sinusitis”, instead of “senos” because here “senos” means breasts!” Yes even after 7 years of studying Spanish I still walked around all morning telling people I had a breast infection instead of a sinus infection. Luckily I’ve learned to laugh at myself, and I hope you laughed at this too.
So what are some of my favorite parts of Spanish?
For starters, there are more than 14 tenses in Spanish that we can speak in, and they all express different things- we have different forms of commands, different ways of saying things in the present, and two main ways of speaking in just the past tense.
Next, there are words that are spelled very similarly and sound very similar in Spanish alone. For example “cansada”means tired while “casada” means married. Imagine how easy it is when you’re really tired trying to speak Spanish and trying to tell someone you’re tired “Estoy cansada” and accidentally telling them you’re married “Estoy casada”. Other examples include
“caballo “– horse “cabello”-hair
“Papa” – the catholic pope “papa”- potato “Papá”- dad
“caro”- expensive “ carro”- car “ cara”- face
The list could go on and on.
Then there are the words that are what we call false cognates. These imposters look similar to English words, but mean something different than the English word they look like. “Un éxito” is not an exit but a success. “Salida”is exit in Spanish. “Recordar” does not mean to record, that’s “grabar”. It means to remember. “Sopa” is not soap, but soup. Soap is “jabón” in Spanish. To top it all off, the word “embarazada” doesn’t mean embarrassed, but pregnant. Again, the list could go on forever and it’s just one more reason I love studying this language, even if I sometimes make tiny mistakes that greatly change the meaning of what I’m saying.
Another funny thing is how different Spanish is from country to country. There are at least 11 different ways to say “drinking straw” depending on which country you’re in, and if you use the wrong one in the wrong country- you could end up saying something pretty naughty by accident. Here in Mexico it’s “popote”. I’ve also struggled with a new phrase for saying something is cool. When I was in Ecuador they used “Que chévere”, here in Mexico we say “Que padre!”
And then, some words just can’t even be translated into English at all. Like “empalagarse”. This specifically means that feeling you get when you’ve eaten too many sweets, but it can also be used to describe a person who is too affectionate
And life would be all too simple with just one way to say something. In English, we have just one word and one way to say “I love you”. In Spanish there are two verbs for love, one you use more for friends and the other is used more in a romantic way. We also only have one way to say “to be” or that something “is…” In Spanish, you guessed it, there are two verbs for “to be” and they are used in wildly different ways, making forming even the most basic of sentences a guessing game sometimes. And yes these verbs for “to be” come with rules for usage, don’t worry.
One of my favorite things about Spanish is how it specifically has words that reflect the culture and how the people in Mexico are. When you sit down for a meal with friends or family expect to sit and talk for hours after you’ve finished eating. We call this the “sobremesa” or literally “over the table” and it’s one of my favorite things about Mexico. Another word I love that expresses the culture is “ahorita”. “Ahora” means “now” in Spanish, but “ahorita” is a little more complicated. It can either mean “right now, at this moment” or “in a little bit” or “when I get to it eventually in a little while”. If this doesn’t express how Mexicans run their time, then nothing will. We aren’t based on the hour on a clock here, but by the event that’s happening and the people we are with.
We haven’t even gotten to Náhuatl, an ancient Aztec language that is still around today here in Mexico City. Believe me, that “tl” sound at the end is harder than you’d think to make correctly, as are most of the words from the Náhuatl language. Imagine trying to tell someone “I’m going to tlalpan right now” or “the restaurant is in “iztapalapa”. I was even corrected mispronouncing the name of my own neighborhood of Coyoacán when I first got here because I wanted to pronounce it with an “a” at the beginning not an “o” like “Cayoacán”.
I hope this blog post made you laugh a little and opened your eyes to the intricacies of learning a second language, and then putting it to use in everyday life. Learning in a classroom is VERY different than actually applying what you’ve “learned” to real-life situations, with real-life people, and real-life communication. I have days where conversation is no problem, and then come the days where Spanish just isn’t functioning in my brain, to understand or to speak. I also definitely do not want to overlook the respect and admiration I have for the other people on my team here in Mexico that had no Spanish experience before moving to Mexico. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't think I would've been brave enough to move to a country where I couldn't already speak the language. I have an absolute love affair with this language, and wouldn’t trade it for the world. That I know for sure.