Last night we had the pleasure of meeting Juan Manuel at one
of the local cantinas. We had chatted briefly with him before, but tonight the
bar was pretty full and recognizing him, we invited him to sit at our table.
The conversation that ensued was such a delight it inspired me to write about
the importance of getting to know the locals and learning to speak Spanish.
Juan Manuel, or just Manuel as he goes by, is a dapper, soft-spoken
man in his mid-fifties. He speaks English very well, but from the beginning of
our conversation did not hesitate to switch back and forth to Spanish and test
the limits of my skills. We have been doing fairly intensive Spanish study
lately, and I can say that I have improved significantly in the last month.
With that said however, my Spanish still sucks, and having an opportunity to
sit and talk with a bilingual Mexican showed me there is no substitute for real
conversation, in a real life situation.
The worst part about speaking a little Spanish is that once you
do, the person you are speaking with will often assume you speak a lot of
Spanish. This will frequently trigger a rapid-fire burst of Spanish dialog that
unfortunately sounds a lot like blaho-blaho-blaho to me. This overwhelming
stream of words is impossible to comprehend and usually ends up with me just
shaking my head and muttering “Si” no matter what it is they actually said. This
can cause some real problems when you suddenly have ordered 50 kilos of some
strange looking fruit, or have 100 live chickens delivered to your door. To
avoid this, you can either say “despacio por favor” (slowly please), or admit
“mi español no es muy bueno” (my Spanish sucks). Either way your conversations will be somewhat limited.
But by speaking directly with a bilingual speaker, I was
able to ask questions, get corrections, and blunder my way through a real
conversation. This experience was invaluable, as many of the lessons we have
taken where you learn how to say something like “the elephant wants more grapes
on the cake” (an actual phrase from a lesson) have for some reason just not
proved to be that valuable. In the short time that we spoke, while I sucked
down a beer and a couple of shots of Tequila, and Manuel drank Brandy and Coke
(a strange drink for a Mexican!), my confidence in speaking grew stronger by
the minute.
What’s weird, for me at least, is the rather strange effect
that speaking in English with a Spanish speaker has on you. For some reason, I
just can’t seem to help myself from speaking English with a Spanish accent.
Like some bad actor in a B-grade Mexican Western, my voice sounds like either the “we
don’t need no stinking badges” guy from Sierra Madre, or the smooth tones of what I call the Ricardo Montalbán effect. The
really weird thing is though, it seems to work, and the Mexicans I have spoken
with either don’t seem to notice, or are too polite to laugh. I sometimes think
about what it must be like for the Mexicans to try and talk with us gringos. It
might be comparable to trying to have an adult conversation with a three year old,
only our grammar and pronunciation are probably worse! What was nice was Manuel
saying I spoke very good Spanish. I have had a few other native speakers say
this, and what I have realized is my pronunciation of the limited words I have
mastered is apparently pretty good. This is encouraging! Speaking Spanish here will
not only make your life easier, it will enrich your experience in many, many ways.
One tip I can share with those of you who are currently
learning Spanish and struggle to keep up in conversations is to focus hard on
hearing the words you do know, and not try to figure out every word. I first
applied this to understanding how much money I was being asked for. By
listening carefully to the first part of what they are saying, I could figure
out what I needed to cover what was being asked for. If they say
“trescientos…blah blah blah” I know they are asking for more than three
hundred, but less than four. I simply hand them four hundred and get my change.
Previously I had tried to listen to the whole thing, got lost, and just shook
my head while sticking out a large pile of cash. I then learned to apply this to full
sentences. If I hear three or four words that I understand, I can usually
extrapolate the rest of the sentence.