One night, I visited a dingy but homey three-bedroom apartment. The girl who was renting the room, Virgínia, sent her friend Melissa, who spoke excellent English, to find me at the nearest metro station because I was lost and clueless. While Virgínia showed the place to some other guy, Melissa and her friend Juan Carlos invited me into the dimly-lit living room to sit, watch TV and share some red wine, chorizo and Manchego cheese. For a Madrid rookie like myself, it was awesome.
The door that connected the living room to the hall was open, and Melissa told me to shut it so we could hear the TV better. I obliged, but instead of closing with a “click,” the door collided, “thud!” with something on the other side. Of course it was the other apartment-seeker, and Virgínia entered the room after him, throwing her hands up at me and crying, “¿Qué haces, gringo?” Which means: “What the heck are you doing, you American buffoon?”
I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, and that I was embarrassed. So I said, “Lo siento. Estoy embarazada.”
Which means: “I’m sorry. I’m pregnant.”
Naturally, every Spanish-speaker in the room erupted into laughter. Once they dried their eyes, they explained to me that the Spanish word for “embarrassed” was not “embarazada,” but “avergonzado.” Then they asked how far along I was and if I knew yet if it was a boy or a girl.
More than a year later, my Spanish has improved tremendously, largely because I constantly put myself in situations such as the one above. That is not to say that I tell people I’m pregnant on a daily basis, but that I continually force myself to use the language and am not afraid to make mistakes.
And that’s the key: Not being afraid.
Teaching English over here, I often remind my students that that Lessons One, Two and Three of learning the language are “quita la verguenza” — “get rid of your shame.” I exhort them, with arms raised, “Open your mouths and let the words fly!” Sometimes it works.
The Spanish people, like Americans, are a proud people. They’re proud of their history, their culture and their language. Partially because of this — and also similar to their American counterparts — they are more than a bit resistant to learning a new, foreign language that is suddenly gaining popularity in their country.
As I’m writing this, a fourth-grader named Irene smacks me on the back. She hardly spoke any English in my classes last year, but she never shuts up … which, when learning a language, is actually a terrific thing. She made major strides by the end of the year because she forces herself to speak, makes tons of mistakes, is corrected by her teachers and (albeit sometimes slowly) learns from them.
Unfortunately, this enthusiasm to learn by trial-and-error is not shared by all, especially not by the teachers. Last year, my Bostonian co-worker Justin and I tried to hold conversation classes with the teachers on Wednesdays, and let’s just say that people would have showed more interest in a race between a snail and a turtle. We were thrilled if anyone showed up at all.
At the start of the year, with Justin now in Valencia, I didn’t try to re-initiate the conversation classes. Many of the people here, as much as I love them, are set in their ways, and it seemed that they were as opposed as ever to learning English. When the two other native English speakers and I talked to each other in our mother tongue at morning coffee breaks early in the term, we were told on more than one occasion that “Aquí en el comedor, hablamos español” — “Here in the dining room, we speak Spanish.” English was perceived as a threat.
Then, at our celebratory staff luncheon before the holiday break, a Chrismachanukwanzaa miracle happened: Thanks to a bit of champagne, a few of the teachers who in their lives have spoken maybe five words of English started asking me how to say different words. A couple hours (and bottles) later, and they were pronouncing their colleagues’ names with English accents and learning new vocabulary.
Not to mention that they suggested starting up conversation classes again.
Last week, I met with one of the teachers who had previously been one of the most English-resistant, and for an hour we studied the ABCs, the days of the week, the months of the year and the four seasons. Despite her limited vocabulary, she has a good ear for the language and, much more importantly, has since that day been an English parrot, asking the other English teachers and I to define words and repeating them.
This week, on Wednesday, we had the best-attended English conversation class in the history of Santa Quiteria elementary school. A whopping five teachers gathered with me, and we took turns reading a story.
Perhaps five people doesn’t sound like much to you, but to me it was a tremendous breakthrough. People who before had avoided English like a dark family secret were now breaking the ice — still self-conscious as could be, but doing it. As one of the teachers read, I noticed her literally trembling because of her anxiety. Yet she got through it, gaining self-confidence with every word. They all did. As a teacher, I couldn’t have been more proud; Lessons One, Two and Three of Learning a Language 101 were starting to sink in.
As aforementioned, many Americans share the Spanish (and, in general, human) aversion to new languages. Second languages are foreign, they sound funny, and trying to learn them is more humbling than a round of golf. A language is like a 50-foot-wide onion: It has so many layers that, once you start cutting into it, it can make you weep.
But that is nothing to be afraid of! As you get better and better, you find that you are able to communicate with and understand people who before would have remained perfect strangers to you because of the language barrier. It is a wonderful thing.
Before you arrive at that point, though, you have to make thousands and thousands of mistakes. On a daily basis — no, an hourly basis — I mess up my verb tenses or the gender of nouns, or I use one word when I mean to use another. Then I find out the right way to do it, and my Spanish gets better.
This process is absolutely, vitally necessary to learning not only a language, but anything else. Your mistakes are your personal encyclopedia of what not to do. I tell my students time and time again, in whatever language gets the message home: The only mistake is to fear making them.
There’s nothing to be pregnant about.
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