As some of you may already know, I was on vacation to Argentina recently. It was a good trip, but even before the trip started, we realized that I was the only brown person. Why is that important information, you ask? I'm the only one of the three who speaks "fluent" Spanish.
For those of you who are astute or curious readers, you might wonder why I used quotes for that last sentence. After all, I was born in a Spanish-speaking country, I speak castellano (read: Spanish) at home, I took enough classes in high school to bone up on my grammar & general literacy, and I've been known to use it when communicating with coworkers in Spanish-speaking countries. So why the quotes?
Well, seeing as how my job was to translate things to English while on this trip, I kept doing so. Often times, I would do this in front of someone who was speaking Spanish to me. And then a few seconds later, that person would magically start speaking English to me and my party. On the one hand, it was a very nice thing for them to do. It saved me a little bit of effort, and it made the whole process more efficient. On the other hand, these people spoke Spanish as their first language, so their English wasn't as good as their Spanish. There were often little tidbits that would get lost in the process of translation.
And in that process, my pride would take a little bit of a hit. After all, there was no way to be reasonably sure that they weren't switching to English because my Spanish was poor. Also, this happened more than once, so I couldn't exactly brush it off as a coincidence. So, a tiny little piece of me died every time whenever they switched to English. Tour guides were usually the worst offenders, as my friends and I generally stuck together. Even if I had understood everything the guide had just said, he would usually make certain to repeat himself in English. Weep my Peruvian heart.
Of course, not speaking with the Argentinean accent/diction made it fairly obvious that I wasn't a local (side note: that whole "vos" thing still sounds weird to me). So even if I was speaking perfectly valid Spanish, cab drivers and other people would have thought to ask me where I was from. On an intellectual level, I get that. On a gut level, I blog about my Spanglish.
I'm going to have to practice more often, dammit. So if anyone's looking to practice your Spanish, you know where to find me.
For those of you who are astute or curious readers, you might wonder why I used quotes for that last sentence. After all, I was born in a Spanish-speaking country, I speak castellano (read: Spanish) at home, I took enough classes in high school to bone up on my grammar & general literacy, and I've been known to use it when communicating with coworkers in Spanish-speaking countries. So why the quotes?
Well, seeing as how my job was to translate things to English while on this trip, I kept doing so. Often times, I would do this in front of someone who was speaking Spanish to me. And then a few seconds later, that person would magically start speaking English to me and my party. On the one hand, it was a very nice thing for them to do. It saved me a little bit of effort, and it made the whole process more efficient. On the other hand, these people spoke Spanish as their first language, so their English wasn't as good as their Spanish. There were often little tidbits that would get lost in the process of translation.
And in that process, my pride would take a little bit of a hit. After all, there was no way to be reasonably sure that they weren't switching to English because my Spanish was poor. Also, this happened more than once, so I couldn't exactly brush it off as a coincidence. So, a tiny little piece of me died every time whenever they switched to English. Tour guides were usually the worst offenders, as my friends and I generally stuck together. Even if I had understood everything the guide had just said, he would usually make certain to repeat himself in English. Weep my Peruvian heart.
Of course, not speaking with the Argentinean accent/diction made it fairly obvious that I wasn't a local (side note: that whole "vos" thing still sounds weird to me). So even if I was speaking perfectly valid Spanish, cab drivers and other people would have thought to ask me where I was from. On an intellectual level, I get that. On a gut level, I blog about my Spanglish.
I'm going to have to practice more often, dammit. So if anyone's looking to practice your Spanish, you know where to find me.
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