¿Hablo Inglés?

Last year in Bilbao I was at the end of my rope. Nothing bad in particular had happened, but I’d been on too many buses, in too many hostels, had too many partial-hangovers and sun headaches, too many shitty sandwiches made in dingy kitchens. I’d had enough. Still, I was doing my best to see the city. While exploring the old town, some sort of baked goat cheese tapas still settling, I heard an almighty racket out of the window. I peered out to see what was going on and coming down the street, supported by a soundsystem on wheels, was a raucous protest-cum-dance party. Basque separatist flags, Palestine solidarity flags, pride flags. People drinking, dancing, holding up huge puppets of some kind. They poured down the street. It looked amazing. I finished my beer, paid quickly, and went to see what was going on.

This is the cure, I thought to myself. Something fun and spontaneous to shake me out of my lassitude. Bilbao’s finest anarchists, liberationists and dancers. A palpably joyous atmosphere. After a few minutes I found that I was still struggling to enjoy myself. I felt like a spare part. This is mostly because I don’t speak good Spanish. I certainly don’t speak Basque. And though there might have been people in the crowd whose English was very good (there always is), translation is an imposition. It takes people away from their friends. So I slowly sidled away, called it a night, went back to the hostel to try and get some sleep. In that moment I told myself that I wouldn’t let it happen again. I was going to learn Spanish and I was going to have conversations with local people. I didn’t want to spend another evening miserable in a foreign country while fun things went on around me in a language that I was deaf to. 

This is one of my many neuroses. I am always aware of how I am received as a tourist. This is partly the spotlight effect (we always think people are thinking about us more than they are), and partly legitimate concern (people hate tourists and they especially hate bad tourists). It is also a very particular strain of British anxiety, because it’s easy to think we have a bad reputation; over time I’ve realised this isn’t actually true at all. Oh, travelling football fans might shit in the occasional pint glass or deface a town square, but generally speaking they represent the minority of British travellers, and we are regarded as excessively polite if anything. Believe it or not, we’re actually fairly well-liked. Note the “British” too - the Scots and the Welsh like to imagine that they are above this sort of thing, but to the average European we’re all the same sunburned specimens. Just be glad you aren’t American. 

One of the ways I do my best to evade the Brits Abroad stereotype is to really, really try with the local language, even if it’s just pleasantries. I will create far more annoying and difficult interactions than necessary with my insistence on learning a phrase. Sometimes they just won't have it - they detect the Anglo Particles radiating off me and respond flatly in English, saving us all the time. Other times they appreciate the effort. Sometimes they appreciate it too much, and rattle off a response in such high-speed Spanish or French that I have to go straight into reverse and admit that I’ve got nothing after my first line. It bothered me in Thailand and Vietnam to abandon this (I could have tried harder but really, they’re impossible without serious study - it’s all in the pronunciation and the stress). Walking into a bar or a restaurant in a foreign country and blithely speaking English - that’s an ick, as they say. I might as well be wearing a pith helmet.

So; Spanish. I spent the best part of three months in Spain last year, though mostly on the Camino trail, where English is the international language. And now I’m in Mexico. I chose it deliberately so that I would have no choice but to learn Spanish. Total immersion. I listen to my podcast, I practice speaking to people, I look up every new word I see. When I walk down the street I read signs out loud to myself under my breath, practicing my pronunciation. At time of writing I have come to stay in a city which has no expat community, no Americans. Sink or swim. 

I think I’ll get there eventually. I have to. Every so often I’ll have a moment of language euphoria. I’ll have a successful multi-part interaction with someone in Spanish. I understand what they’re saying and they understand me. It’s magic. But I am also finding that it is exhausting. Some days if I don’t feel right I’ll avoid any interaction at all which might lay bare my failure to understand anything that’s going on. I don’t want to have to rehearse things in my head, or have to repeat that same dreaded phrase: disculpe, no hablo bien Español. That itself is mostly a lie. “I don’t speak good Spanish”. Better to say I don’t speak Spanish at all, because I clearly do not. I am in an awkward interim phase where I have learned enough to know that I know nothing. I look at verb conjugations and my eyes unfocus. The idea of learning to speak this language in a self-directed way, by listening to podcasts and trying to speak to people, now feels utterly impossible, an idiot’s dream. 

There are better ways of doing it, of course. I could pay for a class somewhere. There is also online teaching available, where you have conversations with a friendly bilingual over video call. I simply don’t want to do this. I feel awkward even thinking about it. I want to somehow magically do it all myself, or at least facelessly in a classroom of people. I don’t want to be a big floating head on a video screen. I don’t want to have 1-1 lessons. I can’t explain why I hate the idea of this so much, but I do. 

The biggest problem I am having is not so much knowing the words as understanding the person saying them. My instinct, which I have to overcome with every fibre of my being, is to mentally throw my hands up whenever someone starts speaking to me. I don’t know! I have no idea! I don’t speak Spanish! Even if, were they to slow down, I might be able to grasp it. I’m very good at grasping it when it’s written down. Or when the nice podcast man slowly enunciates it. The second I am plunged into a real life interaction where I don’t already have some idea of what they’re going to say (because they’re not a waiter, or a bus driver) I am immediately overwhelmed and attempt to abandon ship. This relates to what I mentioned above. I don’t want to be a problem. I don’t want them to have to repeat themselves slowly, as if speaking to a simpleton. I don’t want to feel like a simpleton.

Obviously the only solution to all of these issues is to stop being stubborn and awkward and get over whatever various intersecting anxieties are making me act like such a cretin about it. Get the lessons, ask people to speak slowly, gamely attempt to speak to as many Spanish people as possible and let them roll their eyes if they want. You’d think I’d have got the hang of this by now, but you’d be wrong. 

Maybe there will come a moment where it starts to click. I am hoping this will be once I’ve nailed down all the most important verbs and their conjugations. I am, we are, she is, he was. The real building blocks of conversation. My vocabulary for nouns is fairly solid, and half of them are just pan-European Latinate words anyway. Oh, it’s a pharmacía is it? No shit. So I’ll keep grinding away, and hope I’m ready for the next anarchist parade.