As I started
thinking about writing a post about learning Hebrew/living in a country in
which I speak little of the dominant language, I came across a nearly completed
post that I wrote while in Spain but somehow forgot about and never finished. It seems like a great pre-cursor to a post
about learning Hebrew, so I’m posting it now.
So while you’ll have to wait a little while longer for my post about
learning and living in Hebrew, here’s a flashback to my summer travels:
I learned a handful of random words in Dutch during my brief
stay in the Netherlands, but it turns out that “ladies” and “gentleman” were
not included in my lessons. At the
castle we visited during our Oosterbeek walk I went to use the restroom and I
encountered a confused child around 4 years old looking back and forth at the
doors. He was too young to read and the
typical man and woman figures were missing from the entrances. He saw me, an
adult who logically should know the answer, and I assume asked me which way he
should go. I shrugged both because I was
almost as lost without the figures and because I couldn’t actually understand a
word he said. He shrugged back and our
mutual confusion continued to grow for a few moments until I finally used my limited
knowledge of other languages to correctly deduce which way to send us
both. I still find this funny because it
highlights the most basic challenges of being immersed in a completely foreign
language (similar to being a small illiterate child in a literate world) and
because that four year old’s face so beautifully mirrored my own feelings of
momentary bewilderment.
During the month I spent in Germany, I learned a handful of
German words and phrases, mostly focused on food vocabulary due to my many
dietary restrictions. As a result, I
could usually tell vendors at the open air market what I’d like to buy in
German. However, if I bought more than
one item I usually couldn’t understand the amount they asked for payment
without looking at it written down or added up on the scale. Once on a bus in Wismar, I shocked myself by
handing the correct amount to the driver after he told me the cost of a
ticket. There are plenty of Germans who
speak English, but it also turns out there are also plenty who don’t. I broke out into a nervous sweat trying to
buy a SIM card, as I couldn’t understand the terms and conditions nor the
differences between my options. And no
one at MediaMarkt spoke enough English to adequately explain them. On a bus in
Werder I got so flustered when I couldn’t correctly tell the driver where I was
going that I almost gave up and got off the bus so I could look it up on my
phone while waiting for the next one. In the local shop and garden I discovered
on the walk from Werder to Petzow I tried to ask the shopkeeper if the Sanddorn
berries I was buying were grown on the property, just to make small talk. She didn’t speak English, and I couldn’t find
the correct words for the German translation, but because I tried so hard to
find a translation, she then thought it must be a very important question, so
we couldn’t seem to just let it drop. Fortunately, in most cases there were nice
people to step in and help. A woman on the bus in Werder helped me figure out
the stop I needed to tell the driver and an English-speaking local walked into the
Sanddorn shop and translated the question and response. And I will be forever grateful to the woman
in MediaMarkt who approached me and I think said something along the lines of
“you look like you really need some help” in German. And despite her limited English she smiled,
laughed, and did her very best to help me and so I left the store with a
working SIM card in my phone. This was after a week-long phone unlocking/SIM
card confusion saga, so her extra efforts to help me really made my day. So, in the end, all interactions actually
ended well and I learned to just ignore the many signs and overhead
conversations that I couldn’t understand.
Plus, there were plenty of days in which language wasn’t an issue at
all.
Still, after over a month of these
little confusions, how good it felt to understand and be understood again. I flew Iberia airlines from Zurich to Spain
and in the Zurich airport, I offered to communicate in Spanish at check-in as
the woman working the counter said her English wasn’t great. By the time I
reached the Madrid airport, I was on cloud nine. I bought my SIM card in a
store in the airport, easy as could be, and I understood all the conditions and
my options for adding additional credit if I needed. I just
relished in speaking Spanish. In
Germany, one of Nikki’s uncles visited.
He spoke Spanish better than English, having lived in Chile for a few
years in his twenties, so we communicated in Spanish. And he talked about dreaming of Chile in
Spanish and the emotional attachment one forms to a language after living
immersed in it. How true! My love of
Spanish has been shaped by the wonderful experiences I’ve had living in Spain
and working in the U.S. with Spanish speakers.
And sometimes just speaking Spanish makes me happy. And oh how I love making small talk, which
Spaniards are equally open to!
You miss the little things when you
don’t understand the conversations around you.
At the weekly market in Segovia, as I waited to buy vegetables from a
vendor, a few older gentlemen were bantering with the woman selling
produce. They apparently didn’t realize
that she was still helping a woman obscured by the side of the truck and that
there were a couple other people standing around waiting and started to give
her a hard time about coming over to sell them tomatoes. She told them something along the lines of “Ok,
I’m running to serve you immediately” as she stayed where she was and continued
to help the other customer. I found this
sarcasm rather entertaining, but would have missed it entirely if I didn’t
speak Spanish.
Even in Spanish, during in-depth
conversations on many specialized topics, I still struggle to express myself
fully. And after arriving in Malaga, I
was quickly reminded of how much harder the Malagueño accent is for me to
understand than that of the Madrileños.
Even so, I still smile when I hear the Malagueño accent, as it brings a
certain nostalgia for my Spanish “home.”
And when in Malaga, I quickly reverted to dropping the “s” in “gracias”
and the “ta” in “hasta luego.” As I traveled around different regions in Spain,
my proficiency was enough that I quickly learned to adjust for regional accents
and terms, referring to the main food market as the Mercado Central in southern
cities and the Plaza de Abastos when in the north. For a month I was in
language heaven. Then I landed in Israel
and it started all over again – and this time it involves a different alphabet!
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