The language/El idioma

Today I'm writing about language.

I'm not going to rehash my complaining about my poor Spanish skills here. I'm writing about observations I've picked up about Spanish, and my struggle with a curveball thrown at me in history class today.

I asked a few trusted sources about my preparedness for immersion once I completed the first year of my Spanish classes: my Spanish professor and my global studies advisor. They both assured me that I would be fine coming to the Dominican Republic after successful completion of Spanish 1B, the second semester of the first year of Spanish classes at San Jose State.

That makes sense, if you know the curriculum. Spanish 1A/1B teaches the grammar and fundamentals of Spanish. I got A's in both classes. On paper, I was ready to be shipped off to a world where they speak my new language.

I'm very strong with Spanish grammar. I know the contexts in which to use certain verb tenses. I remember which nouns are masculine and feminine with little problems. I even remember nuances such as Greek loan words taking masculine gender articles despite ending with -a, a classic designation of feminine nouns of Spanish origin. The only thing I had trouble with grammar-wise was the two main past tenses of verbs: preterite and imperfect. After drilling exercises repeatedly and listening/reading more Spanish, I'm getting the hang of those now too.

I didn't pay much attention to vocabulary in either 1A or 1B. Now I realize how damaging that was for me. No wonder I can't understand what anyone's saying here. Being strong on grammar in any language but not knowing vocab is like trying to run after someone sliced your Achilles tendon in half.

Fluency in Spanish is something that's important to me. It's become one of my biggest goals for the future.  But even as I can become fluent by graduation, once I've completed the third year of my Spanish classes, I don't know that I'll always be 100% comfortable in the language, and I know that I won't always be understood.

Take my history teacher here, for example. He speaks English fluently and I have no trouble understanding him. He doesn't always use English syntax correctly and sometimes his verb conjugations are off, but I understand what he's saying. Sometimes he doesn't understand what I say in English because of lexical differences, but after trying to explain it a different way, he understands.

This leaves me to question what fluency really is. Is it speaking, reading, and writing perfectly in a language? Or is it grasping the language well enough to make your point understood? Does fluency demand a speaker at least understand lexical differences and dialects within the chosen language? For example, I'm going to return to the States speaking Dominican Spanish. In a world of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, I can't see "que lo que" ("what's up?") and "'ta bien" ("that's fine") being understood. But that's how I speak here, because it's how we speak here.

I met a visiting professor from Georgetown University in Washington, DC at a lecture at FUNGLODE last week. Right off the bat I could tell he wasn't Dominican. When he spoke, there were subtle differences in his accent and the way he pronounced words. I learned he's Venezuelan.

I also remember my Spanish teacher telling us that some Spanish speakers pronounce the Z sound as a "th." It's a very European thing.

I'm fascinated by the differences in lexicon and dialects in any language, but especially in how Spanish evolved in different parts of the world. For my PhD, I'd really like to study the sociological reasons for why Dominicans speak the way they do, versus Venezuelans, Mexicans, South Americans, Filipinos, etc., and how phrases like "que lo que" (or KLK in netspeak) and "'ta bien" came to be here.

That should get me a hefty research grant, right? Maybe I can finally get that education visa to go to Cuba, too.

In class today we read aloud from a translation of an article written by a high ranking Catholic priest here. Naturally, I had to read the parts with Latin words. You'd think that I'd be okay with Latin after studying four years of French in high school, learning Spanish now, and generally being an etymology whore. I could not pronounce the Latin words, even if you put a gun to my head and told me my life depended on reading those words.

And it's true. I'm obsessed with word origins. All this chatter about studying dialects and etymology. Maybe I should have been a linguistics major.

The experience was good for perspective. It showed me that I suck at Latin, but I'm pretty good at Spanish. The only reason I suck at Latin is because I haven't studied it. Even when I took Japanese--which is a bitch for someone with only a background in Latin-based languages, let me tell you--I grasped it quickly. I've lost most of it because I don't practice reading, writing, and speaking.

That's not going to happen with Spanish. It's part of my life now. I can't rely simply on my ability to pick up foreign languages quickly. It means I have to keep working toward my goal of fluency and I have to make mistakes and look stupid and mess up along the way, because that's how we learn.

And if it means I never get to learn Dutch or Korean (two more goals of mine), then oh well. I fell in love with Spanish and the Caribbean, and this is where I--in my academic and linguistic adventures--belong.