Spanish Update

So, I have been here in Chile for two months now, I am still thinking in English, and I have gotten very involved with the idea of whether or not my Spanish is progressing at a fast enough pace. My biggest fear is to leave Chile not feeling like I am fluent--when I expressed this to my Spanish professor I was told that there are different levels of fluency... aka, everyone uses the word but means something different by saying it. So basically, I am forever stuck in a purgatory of never knowing how to express my abilities... or disabilities... in Spanish because, ironically, the thought will be lost in communication.

When I first got here, I felt like I lacked a vast vocabulary. What I realized was that, although there were a lot of words that I needed to learn, the bigger issue was learning how to experience Spanish in a Chilean context. That is to say, know all of the local cultural influences, concepts, sayings, products, streets, landmarks, and influence of the ancient civilizations that has lived in these parts for hundreds of years. I was expecting myself to know a lot of things that I would have not had any previous exposure to since they are words and concepts unique to Chile, yet I never realized that this was the issue that I had come up against. For example, instead of calling the police policía, they are called carabineros. When going to the supermarket, they ask you if you want to pay en cuotas, which always confused me because I had no clue what it meant (making me feel like an idiot), but finally came to understand that it is normal in Chile to purchase something and pay the debt off in smaller installments rather than all at the time of the purchase. In the states, police are police and it is uncommon to pay installments directly to a retailer, rather than paying the lump sum at the time of purchase (although I suppose our solution is credit cards!).

Apart from needing to learn of the ins and outs of everyday life here, the fact does remain that in order to articulate myself better, I do need to learn more vocabulary. I keep a small notebook that probably contains 500 new words that I have read or heard, although I cannot say that I have actually learned them all! A lot of the time though, I have found that I am learning a lot of synonyms of words that I already know. It is easy to convey an idea to someone with a limited vocabulary, but to understand you need to be able to grasp onto the important words and concepts. In order to start picking up on more of these words, I have been reading the newspaper daily. I have only been consistently doing it for a week now, but already I have found it easier to read, even though there are still a lot of words I do not know. I should be watching TV in Spanish, but I did not watch it much at home, and I do not have the urge to do it here... especially considering the TV is ancient and there is not cable!

One of the other big issues that I have come up against is that, although I can effectively communicate most ideas, I feel my Spanish is currently a science rather than an art. I mean this in the sense that I always string words together that I know belong, but if you think about it, there are tons of times in English where you use a word that does not directly mean what you are trying to say, but in that specific context fits well. The first example I can think of is the Skittles one-liner, "taste the rainbow." WHAT THE HECK DOES THAT ACTUALLY MEAN? Luckily, with a strong command of English, we are able to understand what it means without thinking twice about it. I definitely am not at the point where I can use Spanish in that way. Nonetheless, with my English, I have begun to note all of the times that I use forms of slang or colloquialisms that would seem bizarre to a non-native speaker. For example, the other day I was talking to a friend in Germany and I said to him, "I bet you're eating that up," to mean that he must be loving it; right away I knew that he would not know what that means, and his response was a simple, "What?"

I was curious to know how I am doing on verbs, and so I went through my 501 Spanish Verbs book to see which ones I didn't know. I still do not know if I am happy or sad about the fact that there are 120 that I did not know. I guess the positive way to say it is that I do know 381 of the verbs in the book, and of course there are others that are not included in the book that I know as well (which conversely means that are a million more not in the book that I do not know...ha). When I get the motivation, I think I will do flash cards for those verbs I am missing. I mean, if I know the 501 most important verbs, I should be at a pretty good place in my ability to communicate...

The one thing that I am still missing is constant conversation with native speakers. Like I have said before, I try really hard to avoid English, but I may not try hard enough to find good Spanish. Many of my friends are international students, which is great, but I am not learning anything from their speaking. I am not picking up on colloquial phrases used, or hearing them speak Spanish as an art, rather that the science that my friends and I are currently doing (luckily, at this point our lab has not blown up!). And that previous side note brings me to my final point, I simply do not think that I have found my voice in Spanish. There is so much to be said about intonation and emphasis in what you are saying that helps convey a thought. If I were to say the previous side note in a monotonous voice, you would not necessarily get that I was being sarcastic and referring to my comment about art.

Well, I guess that is where my Spanish is. I can only hope that my skills progress exponentially, because I only have 3.5 months left!