I Wish I Were a Polyglot (Part 2)
My Spanish was rusty when I first started learning German, but Spanish had been carving out space in my brain since I was 14 years old. This meant that, for a while, whenever I tried to say something in German and didn't have the vocabulary, my mind would sift through its foreign language section and produce the Spanish word. Sometimes it even found the Catalan word. This still happens to me on occasion. Just this morning I was trying to recall how to say "schedule" in German and my brain helpfully supplied, "horario."
For the most part, though, German is now dominant in my brain. These days, if I attempt to speak Spanish, German comes out. And that's a bummer to me because, although I've invested a lot of time and energy into learning German, I've invested more time and energy into learning Spanish. And, even more importantly, Spanish is the language I chose.
E studied Spanish in high school and college because he needed to meet the foreign language requirements. In high school, his options were limited: Spanish or French. In college, he could have started a new language, but decided to build on his existing foundation until he had the credits he needed. My high school had an excellent foreign language department and offered Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, and Latin. I picked Spanish because it seemed most useful (so many Spanish-speaking countries I could someday visit!) and then I continued taking classes beyond what was required of me because I found language learning interesting. I was done with my university's language requirement when I took the Spanish-to-English translation course that I mentioned in yesterday's newsletter. That was just a fun elective for me.
It's a little bit silly, but watching Encanto over the weekend reminded me of this, of my choice to study Spanish. I paused the movie at one point to comment to E that I love how "mi vida" is a term of endearment in Spanish. It would sound so over the top to call someone "my life" in English, but it's perfectly lovely in Spanish. At another point, when the main character's dad said "miércoles" (Wednesday) instead of "mierda" (shit), E and I both cracked up, delighted to learn this usage of Wednesday as a child friendly expletive. It reminded me of my Catalan host dad who always expressed surprise with "ostras" (oysters) instead of the sacrilegious "hostia" (Host, referencing Communion wafers, a "Jesus Christ"-style expletive).
After the movie ended, Spanish-language music reverberating in our heads, E and I agreed that we kinda, sorta, just... like Spanish more than we like German. We like the sound of Spanish and we like that it feels familiar since it's a language we've both known bits and pieces of since we were teenagers. We feel more inspired by the idea of studying Spanish than we do by the idea of studying German. For those reasons, moving to a Spanish-speaking country would have made a lot of sense for us. It could still make a lot of sense for us someday! I think moving somewhere Spanish-speaking is also on my mind because a good friend of ours just moved from Boston to Puerto Rico. (Hola, Steph! Espero que Puerto Rico sea fantastico!)
For now, though, E and I are staying in Berlin and I'm actually starting a new German class tonight. As I said in yesterday's newsletter, I've found a lot to love about the German language over the last four years, so I am excited to be studying it formally again. I just also hope that someday I'll get to a point where I feel confident enough in my German that I can practice Spanish again or study an entirely new-to-me language. But I'll say more about that in tomorrow's newsletter.