Two months have passed since I returned from my year learning Spanish abroad. I’ve moved to a new city and started a new job, yet a final word reflecting on my journey remains to be written.
My year can effectively be broken down into three parts. From November through to March, I spent five months working as the Social Media Manager at Habla Ya Spanish School in Panama. I then spent almost five weeks road testing my Spanish as I travelled south to the Ecuadorian capital of Quito. Finally, I spent six weeks cycling in Spain, from Valencia to Gibraltar.
Panama
Each week in Panama, I received either 20 hours of group tuition or 10 hours of one-on-one classes. Although I had learned the basic verb conjugations while studying Spanish at school until the age of 16, these classes exposed gaping holes in my understanding. Before arriving at the school, I had hoped the intensive study pattern would immediately accelerate the learning process. However, my Spanish developed painfully slowly in those first few weeks. As a naturally verbose person, my inability to apply grammar rules in order to communicate with those around me was frustrating. Particularly when other multilingual students, whose brains have been attuned to foreign tongues since childhood, were able to grasp the subjunctive mood, and a whole lot more besides, almost effortlessly. In spite of my best efforts, I fell into the common trap of trying too hard and chastising myself for failing to articulate my thoughts. These weeks – particularly those prior to Christmas – were vital though. They laid the building blocks for later improvements and, gradually, I was able to celebrate small victories as I recognised incremental gains.
My time in Panama was unlike any other travel experience I have had. Previously I would arrive in a destination, see the sights, soak in the culture and move on after a few days. Yet here I put down roots. In the small community of the Caribbean island of Bocas del Toro, residents soon waved and called my name as they passed me in the street. At the school my fellow students rarely stayed more than a month, leaving me in a constantly revolving door of friends who would depart at weekends and be replaced by new arrivals on Monday. Of course, there were also the inevitable misunderstandings that come with learning a language abroad. One that particularly sticks in my mind is when I told my teacher that while sitting on a pier I had seen a human octopus (un pulpo humano) floating in the water, instead of a human poo (un popo humano). How my teacher laughed…
After Christmas I spent a week in each of the school’s other two campuses in Panama. One is located in the capital, Panama City, and the other is in a small, touristy town called Boquete. Panama City is by far the most cosmopolitan capital of any Central American country and while some areas are a little sketchy to walk through at night, other parts resemble an evening stroll through Dubai or Singapore. In contrast, Boquete is built in a mountainous valley surrounded by rainforest, lending itself perfectly to become the country’s eco-adventure capital. After a fortnight exploring the sights of these two very different locations, and attending classes at both schools, I returned to Bocas del Toro.
I had seven weeks left at the school and after throwing myself into every activity I could during my first trip to the island, this time I was keen to focus my attentions on improving my fluency. Outside of classes, I established a study routine consisting of various language games, tasks and apps to develop my listening, reading, writing and oral skills. However, at times it was difficult to maintain my intensity levels. It was like revising for school exams, but instead of the grim togetherness that is generated by being surrounded by friends in the same boat, I was amongst students who simply wanted to party. And who could blame them? I’d already enjoyed most of the island’s highlights though and I knew going to the beach with new friends wouldn’t involve much Spanish. More pertinently, it would also leave me short of cash. So I kept plugging away. Slowly, I began to jump over previous obstacles. I could work out exactly the correct price of a food shop from a store attendant’s mumbled response and I was soon able to read out loud and simultaneously understand the meaning of the words.
Nevertheless, intensive language studying is undeniably draining. Unlike sporting endeavours, improvement is so much harder to measure. In the gym, progress is measured by an extra rep and in the pool by an extra length. Every day might not be better than the one preceding it, but the rewards are there for those who put the work in. When learning a language though, you have good days and bad days, and they seem to occur without rhyme or reason. Sometimes it was difficult to not become frustrated when my brain didn’t seem capable of engaging in the way it did a couple of days earlier. Everyone said learning Spanish would be tough and I threw myself into the challenge with my eyes wide open. I was determined to succeed and I knew I’d be diligent in my efforts to learn. I pride myself on my self-motivation, and last year I completed a Half Ironman race. Yet that wasn’t nearly as mentally challenging as learning Spanish.
Two school friends visited me after Christmas and when I asked one of them to assess my Spanish, he said, “It’s good, but it’s not effortless.” This was almost certainly softened to avoid denting my pride, but I was undoubtedly making progress. He was right about my improving verbal dexterity being far from effortless though. I never attempted to hide the fact my brain was working hard; proving to myself I could learn the language was always enough for me. To make it look effortless was more than I could realistically have aspired to. As a final push to make the most of my time learning the language in Panama, I began chatting to people on the language site italki. After a bit of trial and error, I found an excellent Venezuelan teacher, and I also chatted for free most nights as part of a language exchange with a few South Americans who were keen to improve their English. These included a genial 76-year-old Argentinian lawyer, and a fervently religious resident of the Colombian city of Cali.
Colombia and Ecuador
At the end of March my girlfriend flew out to join me in Panama. We travelled south to Colombia and after she returned home, I continued on to Ecuador. While I struggled occasionally with the variants in regional slang, testing my Spanish in real world scenarios definitely sharpened my skills. However, without the schooling that preceded it, my grammar would have been all over the place.
In Colombia and Ecuador Uber is illegal so the drivers ask passengers to pretend to be a friend by sitting alongside them in the front seat of their car. From a language learner’s perspective this presents a wonderful opportunity. From the back seat there is a clear divide between the driver and yourself and it can be hard to hear their responses when you try to converse in Spanish. Consequently, the temptation is to sit in silence. But from the front seat, it’s considerably more awkward not to chat with the driver. Many were eager to talk about England, football and the cities in their country we had visited. One topic of conversation that the drivers, male and female, seemed to regularly bring up was the beauty of the women in Medellin. In Cali, I joked with one female Uber driver that while I hadn’t noticed the women in Medellin were more attractive than Colombian women elsewhere, I perhaps needed to return to the city to see for myself again – this time without my girlfriend in tow. She howled with laughter.
I’ve heard it said that you lose much of your personality while coming to grips with a foreign language so the fact that I was making jokes gave me a renewed sense of confidence. And on my final night in South America, I chatted away for an hour at 3am discussing complex topics such as the history of the Ecuadorian economy and the government’s decision to adopt the US dollar, as my Uber driver took me to Quito Airport.
Spain
Progress had been hard won but was, indisputably, in front of my eyes. After briefly returning home, I was on my way again – this time to Valencia. Discovering the Spanish coastline while cycling from Spain’s third city to Gibraltar was something that had long been an ambition of mine. Although my financial solvency was becoming ever more precarious, my Spanish skills were at record highs and I was eager to carry on improving. Ten days in to my trip, I met up with my Spanish friend, Javier, in his hometown of Murcia. Over the previous two years in London, we had met on a weekly basis to practise each other’s respective languages. Not only was it great to see a familiar face, but I was pleased he thought I had learned a lot. I made further progress by regularly making small talk with attendants at shopping tills.
During my six weeks in Spain, I generally stayed in Airbnb accommodation and this provided many opportunities to speak Spanish with my hosts. In some places, Airbnb homes were prohibitively expensive so I stayed in hostels. While this was a good way to meet like-minded individuals, it was far harder to stick to speaking Spanish in such a melting pot of cultures where the vast majority of people quickly reverted to using English. Having said this, in a dormitory room in Granada, I met an Argentinian and we quickly struck up a conversation in Spanish about the merits of different coastal towns along my route, and my desire to travel to Buenos Aires one day. I did this all absentmindedly while making my bed from the sheets I had been given from reception and it was only half way through the conversation that I realised how much progress this juggling act represented. I was no longer having to stop everything to chat in Spanish.
Conclusion
So we come to the million dollar question. Am I now fluent? Linguists are always reluctant to answer this question and it’s in part because fluency is so subjective. I’m going to use the definition provided by famous polyglot Luca Lampariello. He defines fluency as the ability to talk and understand conversations relatively smoothly. Certainly, at my best I was able to do this. Whether it was discussing the links between poverty and delinquency, the merits of drug legalisation or the problems with Brexit, I have been able to share my opinions and react to those of others. While I can’t claim to speak flawlessly or to have learned every word in the Spanish dictionary, I am able to enjoy using the language and overcome unfamiliar words in conversation through circumlocution.
Predictably, life has been busy since I returned to the UK. Consequently, I haven’t yet fitted regular Spanish sessions into my weekly routine. I’m confident I will though. My fluency will have declined from the level it peaked at a couple of months ago, but I was reassured when Javier recently suggested we meet up while he was in London. I expected to be horribly rusty having not studied any Spanish for a few weeks, but as soon as I saw him my brain switched back with relative ease. Some vocabulary that I once knew had faded from my mind and my grammar wasn’t flawless. However, I enjoyed catching up and noticing how much easier it felt to communicate than it had last September.
I’m eager to book a short holiday to Spain soon. What more incentive do I need to keep learning?
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