Why learning a new language is hard for me

I've had a long, sordid relationship with the Spanish language.  It started in 8th grade when I opened my fall schedule and discovered, with great horror, that my first period class was P.E.  What kind of school does that to a 13 year old girl?

Fortunately, there was a Beginner's Spanish class also offered during first period, so I traded being sweaty and gross for the rest of the day for la lengua mas bonita - Espanol.

Thanks to this early morning 8th grade Spanish class, I can still recite the pledge of allegiance in Spanish faster than I can recite it in English:

Prometo fidelidad a la bandera de Los Estados Unidos de America
Y la republica que representa
Una nacion, bajo Dios, indivisible
Con libertad y justicia para todos.

So far, this has not proven to be a useful skill, but I haven't stopped hoping.

One year of middle school Spanish turned into three more years of high school Spanish, which turned into two years of college Spanish. By the time I finished my last college Spanish class, I was having dreams in which God would speak to me in Spanish.  I wish I could remember what He told me because maybe things would make more sense in my life than they currently do if I had followed His Spanish instructions more carefully all of those years ago.

As is generally the case for most gringas who learn Spanish in school, I had little or no use for it in my real life, and no opportunity to practice it.  I subsequently never mastered the art of speaking Spanish, but every once in awhile, my ears would perk up when I was out and about and ran into Spanish speakers, mostly late at night in Walmart.  Sometimes I would even go to the Santa Fe Walmart late at night just to listen to the Spanish families out shopping. Recently, I've discovered the Fort Collins Walmart is also a jackpot late at night for Spanish speakers.

So over a decade goes by since my last formal Spanish class.  Flash forward to spring 2010 when I take a group of friends to Mexico, only to get pulled over by a Spanish speaking police officer for driving the wrong way down a one way street.  I was grateful that I miraculously remembered the phone number of a Spanish speaking Mexican friend who lived in the same town and was able to get him on the phone with the cop (actually with all four cops who appeared out of nowhere and surrounded my car when I pulled over) and with some veiled threats and bribery promises, my friend cleared up the situation for me.  But I realized in that moment I was a bit rusty as far as Spanish went and put it on my list of things to work on.

In the meantime, I switched jobs and all of a sudden found myself periodically being more or less a tour guide in Spanish speaking countries.  Right before my first trip to Peru last June, I devoured Rosetta Stone as if I were on death row eating my last meal.  It paid off to some extent - my friend Jeff went to Peru with me (and he had also been on the ill-fated Mexico trip the year before) and said to me within 45 minutes of being in Lima, "Your Spanish is way better this year than it was in Mexico."  Yes!  Gracias, Jefe.

But for me, better is never good enough.  So I started taking Spanish classes and all sorts of other Spanish related things (you can read more about that here).

In the month that I've been immersing myself in Spanish as much as is possible for someone who works 40 hours a week and also wants to have some semblance of a life that's not just about Spanish, I've been encouraged to see how much my comprehension and reading ability has come back, but I'm still really struggling with speaking Spanish and writing it.

For instance, on Thursday, my Spanish teacher taught me about past participles.  Being an English major, you'd think I would know what a past participle is, but I didn't until I learned about them in Spanish on Thursday.  He wanted me to write some simple sentences using past participles, for instance:

Maria ha puesto la mesa.

Maria had already set the table.

I didn't think he was actually serious about making me write sentences like this but after a couple of minutes of me just sitting there watching him do other stuff, he said, "Are you deep in thought?  Why aren't you writing your sentences?"

And I realized that it was because writing a simple sentence about a recently completed action was way too hard, not because I lack the vocabulary or comprehension to make it happen but because I want to know so much more about Maria than that she's already set the table.

I want to know why she set the table in the first place and who she set it for.  I want to know what kind of dishes she used, if they were her grandma's old china or something cheap she bought just to have.  What kind of food is she making?  And why does her name have to be Maria, my least favorite female Spanish name in the world, for personal reasons mostly having to do with runaway train.

My English speaking brain can't handle keeping things simple, so naturally any attempts I make at speaking or writing in Spanish are beyond my realm of capability because I want to jump to a skill level I don't yet have because that's where I automatically go in my native language.

Not surprisingly, my most meaningful and in depth conversations with native Spanish speakers have generally been with 7 year old girls and they go something like this:

Me: Hola.  Me llamo Robin (Hello my name is Robin.)
Girl: Hola.  Me llamo Anna (hello my name is Anna)
Me: Tengo dos gatos (I have two gatos.)
Girl: Tengo un perro (I have a dog).
Me: Que bueno! (that's great!)

Anna and I are totally on the same page when we talk in Spanish, mostly because I have no problems dumbing myself down when talking to a child.  But I would never walk up to my grown man friend Ricardo and say, "Hola, Ricardo.  Tengo dos gatos."  Maybe Ricardo would be really glad to know that I have two cats, but most likely he would wonder why I felt compelled to share that information with him in the first place.

So learning Spanish again for me right now is a lesson in slowing down, not trying to make something simple into something complicated, and to build on each step as I master it.  There's a lot of wisdom in this for me overall when it comes to life.  I tend to make things way harder and more complicated than they need to be and right now Spanish is forcing me to keep things simple.  And tell whoever will listen about my awesome cats.