Last week I returned to my language school. In the past I’ve had classes everyday and that’s been a big chunk of my life here in Granada. There aren’t many students around at the moment and so for the now they’re only twice a week for a total of 3 hours. That means I still have quite a lot of hours in my week left to twiddle my thumbs. Life is sort of returning to normal but with my closest friends currently in Madrid, I find myself still spending a lot of time at home. I mean, I’ve always been a homebody so this isn’t a huge shift but with the beautiful weather and long summer nights it seems a bit of a shame. Anyway, the 2 classes I’ve had so far have been fine but using my Spanish in the class is obviously a different thing to using it en la calle.
On the first day that we were allowed out to exercise, back in May, as Lucía and I returned home we bumped into an acquaintance of hers and it turns out he lives 2 doors away from us. It also turns out that he has a rooftop terrace. Now, my flat is incredible and I love it but I do not have a rooftop terrace. This guy (Bartolomé) is from the Cordoba region (I think) so his accent isn’t particularly different but the first few times we spoke I had no idea what he was saying. I could barely understand a word. The Andaluz accent is notoriously hard to understand but I really struggled with his. I think of the Andalucían accent in terms of how I speak Kittitian; it’s English but it’s not exactly the Queen’s. So I said to Lucía that I could barely understand a word he said and she replied that it was occasionally a teeny bit hard for her too, so it turns out it was a combination of his accent and his lack of enunciation. Having now taken advantage of his roof terrace a few times, I find I’m not struggling to understand quite as much, luckily. This did help to make me feel better and reminded me that you aren’t always going to understand something/someone immediately. Patience and acclimatisation are quite important apparently. (On a side note regarding speaking, I’ve found myself really concentrating on how people use their mouth and specifically their tongue when they speak in Spanish. So if I’m staring really hard at your mouth it’s because I’m fascinated and probably taking notes for how I can improve my own pronunciation).
On Friday I actually had a “Friday night.” I didn’t expect it and it’s obviously been a long time since I’ve not only had a few drinks, but also been out late. (Walking home along the empty cobbled paseo de los tristes with the lights of the Alhambra guiding me home will forever be one of my favourite things about my time here). So yesterday I was more tired than usual and decided that if I couldn’t be at the beach, the next best thing would be the rooftop terrace. Barto kindly left me to my own devices and so I napped in the sun, thinking I was all alone for the afternoon. Imagine my surprise when suddenly he and some of his friends joined me and I realised that I needed to attempt to snap out my stupor and try to make conversation. I hadn’t even spoken to anyone in English that day, let alone Spanish so this was a bit of an ask…
It is true that when I get excited about something, I don’t really shut up and maybe go on a little bit too much. But I think, generally speaking, I’m more of a listener. As a child I always loved listening to the adults, listening in on the after dinner conversation. So I’m trying to remind myself of this when I think about yesterday.
When we all departed last evening, after a few hours together, I found I felt a bit stupid, for lack of a better word. It seems that learning a language will do this to you. I doubt my abilities almost daily. You think that you are progressing and you haven’t had too many mishaps of late (staying at home may have something to do with that) and then bam! you feel as though you are back to square one. Last night I found myself googling “why do I feel stupid in Spanish?” and although I didn’t have a huge amount of success, I did find something that said that in our mother tongue we know that we can argue our case and expect to be understood but in another language this isn’t always the case. Although in English I don’t generally have much fear of being thought of as slow, I really was questioning myself yesterday. Which is weird because one of the girls asked me how long I’d been studying Spanish for because I spoke well (which on one level I also took to mean that she had noted that I seemed to be following the conversation and was able to take part as well). And yet, when I found myself responding to questions I was not actually one hundred percent certain if I was responding to the question I had been asked. I also found that I wasn’t saying quite as much as if I were speaking in English for fear of responding too slowly, grammatically incorrectly, and possibly even appearing a bit dim because I took so long to say the easier and shorter version of what I actually wanted to say. The conversation jumped all over the place; at times it was really interesting but even in English I know I would have just been a listener as I didn’t know enough about the topic to be able to contribute. At times I had zero interest and so obviously kept mum there too. But I realised that when I did want to join in, I couldn’t form my sentences quickly enough (with all of the correct grammar) because I was concentrating so hard on making sure that I had understood what had been said. When I’m speaking one-on-one it’s easier because the other person is usually patient and waits for me to respond because I’m the only other person in the conversation but if you’re in a group you’ve got to be quick before the conversation goes off in a different direction. In English, and sometimes in Spanish, I can listen whilst also thinking about my response to the topic but yesterday it proved almost impossible to do both. The result of this is that I was far more silent than I’d have liked. I was then invited to join them as they moved on to the next place which was really nice of them to offer. I had to decline numerous times but the statement of being thought of as shy, and thus my reason for not joining, has left me feeling almost defensive, or wanting to be able to explain at least. I am definitely shy but I think that moving to another country, where you have to speak another language, will force you out of your shell and so it doesn’t matter if you’re shy or not, you are going to have to just get on with things, or live a life of solitude (which defeats the purpose of moving to Spain, I can be solitary in St. Kitts). It’s strange to think about people’s perception of you in your mother tongue and how much that can change when you’re speaking another language. None of this matters really but it’s still interesting to think about because although it doesn’t change my idea of who I am, ultimately I think on some level we all want to be liked and one of the most obvious ways to do that is to converse and share ideas and if you can’t do that, or you can’t do it as well as you would like, you find yourself questioning yourself and how you come across. It’s a bit frustrating, to say the least.
Anyway, those are some thoughts that attempting to speak in Spanish have brought up… And I’ve now read this over so many times, hoping it makes sense but at this point the words are merging together so I’m not sure if I’ve succeeded. However, Lucía just popped over and I managed to explain it to her and she said the exact same thing has happened to her in Italian and so it seems I’m not alone so hopefully what I’ve written has made sense…
But Who You Be, Really? 