Communication. Important.

Let me just start this blog entry with something that has been haranguing me greatly since I have arrived in Spain – BETTER YET – began LEARNING SPANISH.

I. CANNOT. SPEAK. SPANISH.

Well. I cannot speak Spanish well. But before I beat myself up too much, it might be beneficial to take several things into account before I continue:

1. This is my first time in Spain; nay, a Spanish-speaking nation, so it's not a complete failure that I'm having difficulty with the language.
2. I have been learning Spanish for only two years; which sounds like a lot but four university semesters of 3 hours of Spanish classes a week doesn't actually amount to much. It certainly doesn't amount to much speaking practise, if you're me and you like to 'make up' for missed oral classes going to Salsa on Fridays.
3. The class I have taken this year is Stage 3 class (which only amounts to high-school level).
4. I'm comparing my Spanish to my French, which is more or less fluent these days (without wanting to boast, I did get 85% percent in my French oral exam recently soooo....)
5. (My Spanish oral exam did NOT amount to 85%)

Now it's time to think of the positive things that I have achieved in my life of a Spanish speaker before I embark on the not-so-positive things:

1. I got 65% in my listening exam THIS year (and everyone I spoke to had gotten somewhere within the 40% region, so for ONCE I was not the worst in the class)
2. I understood, to my very great surprise, most of the sermon that was spoken this morning in Spanish church. Even metaphors about sin.
3. I had an empowering (if slightly tipsy) 20 minute conversation with a Mallorcan cab driver on my way home from Palma and he assured me confidently that my Spanish was good. (He may have also said 'Buenas Noches guapa' afterwards making the whole thing a little biased but even so).
4. In Spanish, I once made a joke at the dinner table and people actually laughed. I can't remember what it was now, sadly.
5. I made an AWFUL joke in church today. About Manchester and football. No one laughed.

That's cheered me up slightly. Maybe I can just sit back and laugh at myself through all of this, and hopefully in years to come when my Spanish is fluent like my French I'll be able to re-read this blog and shake my head pitifully.

Now I'm going to tell you all two very encouraging things that encouraging people have said to me about languages (people that are complete strangers to me, one French, one Spanish).

The French teacher at a school I went to in Winchester to talk to the Year Nines about learning languages said something to the whole class which made me like her 10 times more than anyone else in the room. Her English was perfect and she was married to an English man (she still had an amazingly strong French accent which made everything better). She said that when she was fourteen, like they were, her English had been the worst in the whole year in her school. She said that the teacher had told her parents to put her in remedial English classes over the summer. Her mother had sent her packing to England to au pair the second she turned eighteen and then....well the rest is history. She's been living in England for 15 or so years now. She was, for that day, my inspiration, because I know what it's like to be the worst in the class.

Sergio's (the 13 yr boy I look after here) football teacher made a good point the other day when we were introduced:

• ¿Hablas español? (Do you speak Spanish?)
• (I replied) Un poquito (a teeny bit)
• (He smiled) Pues, vas conocer un poco más este fin de verano. (well, you'll know a little more by the end of the summer)

Little by little. Rome wasn't built in a day; neither was French learnt in a heartbeat (took me a good ten years to built that foundation for my year in Nice, whatever level it had been when I started).

I think I get frustrated by my inability to communicate more than anything else. The other day the dad said to me in the car when we were driving to the water park:

¡Hablas poco, tu! (You don't speak much!)

I smiled in response because it's true. And to prove it, I couldn't even think of a sufficient response in Spanish. But on the inside I was roaring with thunder and lightning bolts of frustration and misunderstanding. I was roaring in no particular language; just with all the despondency I could muster.

Let me just explain. To a linguist, not being able to communicate is like not being able to look outside and comprehend that the sky is blue. Or like a mathematician forgetting his eight times tables. Not being able to communicate goes against the very essence of linguistics, which denotes the entire blueprint, set of rules, codes, Constitution and conventions of communication.

As a linguist, communication is not just an essential part of every day but it is my LIVLIEHOOD. Communication is studied, applied, appreciated, studied some more, reapplied, misused, re-appreciated, applied correctly and studied some more. To me language learning is an ongoing part of life which never ends. In the back of my brain, some incessant fool is always asking 'how do you say that in French?' or 'Would you use the subjunctive?' or 'What is the word for it in Spanish?'.

If I could write a love song to language, I would with all my heart, do so. Before you class that as pathetic, just take a moment to think about where I'm coming from! All you are reading right now is communicated via a code of symbols. Without the symbols, my thoughts are just a stream of sounds. Without the stream of sounds, my thoughts are simply silent.

Without language, there would be no literature!

Without language, no jokes!

Without language, there would be no music as we know it.

Without language, there would by definition, be no television.

Without language, there would be no 'I love you's no 'I'm sorry's no 'I'm so glad I met you, you've changed my life's.!

Without language, there would be no blogs.

I think I am particularly enamoured with language because I enjoy writing for one and language enables me to do that but perhaps the wider scope behind my love of language is that it is communication. Communication involves people and relationships, which goes back to who I am and what I do best: socialising! I enjoy people's company: that must be it.

Now is not the time to despair, even though there have been moments today when I've nearly given up. This is only the first step on a ladder of Spanish-speaking adventures. And who knows?

Maybe one day I'll be married to a Spanish, Brazilian, Nicaraguan or Guadeloupian man and we'll have have bilingual kids who can speak both languages perfectly from day one and there'll be none of this communication frustration I've suffered over the years.

Who knows.