I've started studying Spanish again. Ten years ago, that meant spending an hour in a classroom, preceded and followed by a constant stream of English that inevitably made what I learned that hour feel academic. Now, it's just me and a tutor for three hours at a time, preceded and followed by the torrents of Spanish along Avenida Santa Fe. It's definitely practical now. Each time I step out of a lesson, I understand the world a bit better.
It turns out the world uses a lot of words, and to know a language, you have to learn a bunch of them. Walking down the street, what do you see? A sidewalk, a curb, tiles, a staircase with stairs and handrails, dogs being walked with collar and leash, garbage cans, crosswalks, fences. All of those things have names in Spanish. Where do you even start?
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| Certainly not by being clothes-minded. |
You start on the street and learn the words, one by one. The most enjoyable lesson I've had so far was literally walking around with my tutor, him pointing at things, me guessing what they were called, him correcting me. Of course, it was also enjoyable because we stopped for ice cream—you know, to reinforce learning by incorporating the sense of taste. Probably the most salient thing I learned that day was that it's not uncommon for a porteño to order a quarter kilo of ice cream as one serving. In case your metric conversions are rusty: I was really full.
But it's not all ice cream and strolls on a sunny day. Learning a language takes a ton of practice. The immersion is crucial, but it's not comprehensive—we'll still speak English at home. It is tiring enough straining your brain to communicate with native speakers, yet it somehow feels even more exhausting to use Spanish when you know there is a more efficient, more comfortable channel readily available. It's like playing a very long game of Taboo, where all the most obvious words you want to use are verboten. Don't get me wrong, I love that game, but there's a reason it comes with a timer.
It is also not comprehensive immersion because Buenos Aires, like all global cities, is heavily influenced by the English language. Storefronts are dotted with English words. In conversation, you can only say ¿Cómo? so many times before eliciting a well-intentioned "Do you prefer English?" It's possible to get by in this city knowing barely any Spanish at all. We've seen a few people like that, even businesses that cater to them.
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| Apparently bro-speak transcends all languages. |
I suppose there is a comfort in seeing your native language abroad (I refer to English, not bro-speak). But I've found a more profound comfort in realizing the parallels between English and Spanish. First, there are cognates—words in different languages that look and sound similar, and often mean the same thing, because they share a common etymology. The Spanish word cognado is itself a cognate. Montaña, ideal, and teléfono are other examples. Verbs like masticar (to chew) and castigar (to punish) have their analogs in English, disproportionately represented in SAT tests.
Then you notice similarities in compound word construction. Bienvenido is literally bien (well) and venido (come); similarly, bienestar means wellbeing. Skyscrapers are rascacielos because they scrape (rasca) the skies (cielos). I thought the word for windshield wipers was absurd—a combination of the words for clean, stop, and wind, to form limpiaparabrisas—until I realized the English construction followed the same logic. The comparison even carries over to some phrases and figures of speech. Colloquial expressions like "How are things going?" and "Let's see..." have nearly one-to-one translations: "¿Cómo van las cosas?" and "Vamos a ver...", respectively.
I'm fascinated by these similarities because they reveal the Romantic borrowings of the English language. I'm grateful for them because they offer an educated guess at a word's meaning. (It works the other way around, too—I wouldn't have guessed what "masticate" meant otherwise.) And I'm comforted by them because I can't help but feel that these similarities are a small assurance that some time ago, we came from the same place and communicated in the same way, and we are still not that different.
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| I think the Romance languages are getting to me. |
I can think of no better mental exercise than learning a language. It is such an infinite medium, strictly additive and supportive of all pursuits, and I find limitless interest in exploring it.