Though I am able to communicate with little difficulty in a language besides English and though I use it regularly, I don’t consider myself bilingual. My use of Spanish is very personal and I do not yet feel fluent in academic or professional contexts, especially when considering the skill of writing.
I began learning Spanish on a whim; after a trip to Mexico during a college summer, I decided that I’d like to speak the language.
Now, I use it on a daily basis. I recently moved back to the States from
In the time I decided to learn Spanish, I was just beginning my Bachelor’s degree but had already set a personal goal of graduating in just three years, and had no time in my busy schedule to take a language class. I had already passed the language requirement for the degree, as I had taken four years of German classes in high school. With that, I figured I already knew how to learn a language, and so I set out to teach myself. I began with the basics: I bought a grammar book, read a few chapters a week, and wrote out answers to the practice exercises.
The book helped with many fundamental aspects, such as the placement of accent marks, but what helped me most, and kept the language always fresh in my mind, was regular communication with Spanish-speaking friends. I wrote emails to them and used both languages, often putting the shortest or most direct sentences in Spanish.
After graduation (and many trips all over Mexico between), I decided to take a language-intensive course in Ecuador, hoping to improve all areas of my Spanish.
I would have done well to better research institute options; my chosen school was not demanding in the students’ use and mastery of the language. In fact, as many students chose to skip classes, on a few occasions I was the only one present and my teachers had to improvise a class, usually by asking me to read articles aloud. During my time there, I learned most about the language traveling inside the country, negotiating in the market, and trying to use the public transportation system. A final two-page essay was required as part of the final project of the school, but there was little explanation of the assignment. I researched in English and made notes in English before I sat down to carefully translate my ideas into a short, jolting essay in Spanish.
I went back to the States for a short time but kept in touch, via email, with a friend I had met in Ecuador. Though he was fluent in English, we generally communicated in Spanish. The emails were quirky and verbose (both of us being language aficionados) and helped to forge a deep, strong friendship; they are certainly responsible for much of my vocabulary and my ability to discuss and write about personal interests, art, and literature in Spanish.
A short time after, I moved to Ecuador to look for work and to immerse myself entirely in the language and the culture. I picked up much of the language simply speaking with people, a method that is good in the sense that I learned to communicate very quickly and in a very Ecuadorian way (that is, I was often accepted into the culture), but not as good in terms of learning a universally correct Spanish. There are certain verb tenses that are not commonly used in Ecuador (misued, some would say), such as the subjunctive preterite, and in many cases, even now, I am not even aware that I am using them differently or incorrectly.
I tried for awhile to keep a sort of journal solely in Spanish, documenting my experience with the language (like my daily encounter with the phrase “ya mismo,” which, when translated, would mean “right away,” but in Ecuador seemed to mean something like “in another hour or two”). Then, I’d give it to my aforementioned friend, by this time more than a friend, and rather than dates, we’d have grammar and vocabulary lessons in which he’d review my writing.
In reality, though, the journal idea didn’t last long and because my work life revolved around English, much of my experience practicing writing in my first year living abroad was generally limited to text messages. One of the perks of dating a language and literature teacher is that even text messages would get sent back to me with my spelling corrected or a verb changed to subjunctive.
Work reports were done in English, and though I taught some writing skills in my English classes, the method I was using emphasized speaking and listening much more and I didn’t get many opportunities to analyze stylistic differences in English and Spanish writing.
I read in Spanish on occasion, usually short stories by Ecuadorian and South American authors. Generally, though, I preferred to read longer literature in English, because, as my excuse went when I decided to read the classic “Don Quixote” and bought an English edition, “it doesn’t take as much work.” (Though when I said it in Spanish, I played off a double meaning: "Me cuesta menos," meaning literally, "it costs me less"--which it did, as I bought in the States and books in Ecuador are expensive, but also meaning something like "it costs my brain less work.")
My partner and I collaborated for a few months on some translation projects (both Spanish-English and English-Spanish) for a cell phone company. My primary task was to translate texts into English; I knew very well that I did not have the adequate skills to write at the required level in Spanish. I lacked the formality needed for that type of writing, as well as much of the technical vocabulary.
Now, in the USA again, I actually write more often in Spanish, using it primarily to communicate with friends and family-in-law via email, chat, or text messages. I also tend to write in Spanish for day-to-day at-home writing, such as grocery lists, reminders, and on the house calendar.
Because my home life is partially in Spanish (my partner and I live together), I am accustomed to using it for basic little tasks. It feels natural. In these contexts, it doesn’t differ much from the way I use English. However, I still feel very insecure about writing formal letters, essays, or stories in Spanish. I have rarely needed to take on those first two tasks, except in visa-related situations and job searches in Ecuador. I have attempted to write a few short stories too, but I am certainly much more secure in English.
Many stylistic choices that I make in English do not translate perfectly to Spanish, and so even my personal writing in Spanish often sounds strange. I am so comfortable with my style of writing in English that I often unthinkingly transfer it to Spanish. For example, I know that I tend to use punctuation in Spanish in the same way I would use English punctuation (especially commas, with which I take fully liberty in English), though that sometimes has unusual results in Spanish.
Also, because I learned a lot of my Spanish by ear, my spelling skills developed later than my speaking skills. Spanish has a much closer sound-spelling relationship than English, but still, the written form is not always predictable based on phonetics alone. For a long time, I took to interrupting a conversation when I heard a new word in order to spell that word aloud; that helped me both confirm the spelling and visualize the word in order to remember it.
I can comfortably use both Spanish and English to express myself socially and personally. However, English is my writing language and my academic language. My writing in English has become more formalized since returning to academia, but this has not changed my writing in Spanish. Even hypothetically facing an academic task of writing in Spanish makes me sweat: that’s not how I’m used to using my Spanish skills. I am very open verbally in Spanish, as I’m used to speaking on a daily basis. But, I’m used to speaking casually. In fact, my Spanish is very closely linked to so much of my personal life that it feels natural to use it in casual social contexts. It is also the language I used to assert my independence, living on my own for a time in Ecuador. Any writing that I am able to achieve in Spanish reflects some of the defensiveness I learned in the language and culture: I am direct, sometimes even to the point of seeming rude or angry.
I am comfortable speaking Spanish; even in my experiences in Spanish-speaking countries outside of Ecuador, I am capable of making myself understood and overcoming any miscommunications in conversation. Writing is the skill which I lack most, a skill I lack simply because I don’t practice it.
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