Hablo Castellano

Human Highlighter Suit Tally: 7

Some encouraging experiences on the language front.  You have to be careful here to say “I speak Castellano” instead of “I speak Spanish.”  People here in Catalonia speak Catalan, and they are Spanish, so it’s kind of an insult to say you speak Spanish.  Castellano is more PC, and I am constantly struggling to remember that.

I have never felt that my Spanish was good enough to use it in professional situations.  When I’ve done research in the US involving Spanish speaking subjects, I’ve always hired graduate students to do the interviews.  And meetings?  I figure I must sound like a 5 year old, so why bother.  The big news is that, without really planning to… I’m doing it!  I’ve had several meetings with Important People and they’ve just gone on in Spanish.  Yesterday, for example, I met with an architect that someone at the university put me in touch with and, after a few minutes of introductions he said, “Well, your Spanish is definitely better than my English, so let’s speak in Spanish if that’s okay with you.”  I’m not saying that I understand everything, but I can hold my own.  And it’s only by being in these situations that I get better.

We are reading a novel in my Spanish class (don’t get excited—it’s a pretty easy novel) and I had to look up the word nuca.  It means “nape” as in nape of the neck.   The very next day in pilates class the instructor told us to put our hands on our nucas—and I knew what the hell she was talking about!

Thanks to my initial training in Guatemala, and to seven years of living with Blanca, everyone still says I speak like a Mexican. Fine by me.