Not quite bilingual…

I have made it a personal goal to become fluent in Spanish. If you have interest in learning another language, I definitely recommend getting the Duolingo app. But you must do it everyday and you have to practice what you learn through the app on your own. I think it helps a lot. Not only am I using it for Spanish but I’m also using it to learn some Italian before our trip tomorrow.

But I find it very difficult to be bold enough to speak the language in conversation. I get plenty of customers that speak Spanish that I could practice on. But they look at me, see that I’m white and the bilingual kids translate what the parents are saying, even though I can understand them. And I just freeze. I don’t know how to say speak Spanish to me so I can practice but speak slowly because I’m not really that great yet without coming off rude when they aren’t even looking at me. And I’m also nervous that surprising them with Spanish will cause a similar look that I get when people find out that I, a female, majored in engineering. The looks of disbelief can be patronizing and the conversations confirming what I just said can be repetitive and boring. And I don’t want to have the conversation, yes I’m trying to learn Spanish, No I’m not Hispanic, a million times. I just like the language and think it would be intrinsically and extrinsically useful. So instead, I just stare and sort of act like I don’t know that he just said he wants coffee and water.

Yesterday, I was at Walmart looking at something and an elderly Hispanic man comes up to me and asks if I can speak Spanish because he needs help translating to the employee. I know that’s what he said. But I panicked and said I only knew a little Spanish. Which of course caused him to stare at me puzzled since I’d clearly just understood what he said. The employee walked over and was all ‘it’s okay don’t worry’ shooing me away, further destroying my confidence. The man continued to speak Spanish to me describing the type of shoes that he wanted but there was one main word I didn’t know, and I froze further. Excited that I mostly understood but frustrated that I couldn’t prove it. I fumbled awkwardly for my phone like it might help. I felt like I was being interviewed for a job and asked the dreaded “so tell me about yourself.” And all knowledge of myself had immediately flown out of my brain. Every Spanish word that I knew melted into a slush pile of ‘haw-blow por-key-toe es-pan-nole.’

While the Asian employee continued to attempt to shoo me away in her own broken English, a young Hispanic boy walked over. The employee asked if he spoke Spanish and he said he could and agreed to help translate. So I ran away.

Obviously, it’s probably something I’m just going to have to get over if I actually want to become fluent. I’m just going to have to push myself past the discomfort and awkward frustrating conversations.