Lo Siento Pero No Hablo Espanol

I have two and a half months of travelling left and all of that time will be spent in South America and at this stage I’m sick of surviving on a few words here and there in the local language. The aim is to develop my non-existent Spanish skills to a level beyond the usual ability to ask for a room or order some food. Of course I don’t expect to be able to discuss Aristotelian philosophy once August rolls around but to have developed some functional conversation skills should be achievable. So it was that decided to spend two weeks in Santa Cruz attending a language school where I would attend lessons for 4 hours a day, 5 days a week. My teacher was Hugo whose motto, which he endlessly and irritatingly repeated, was “To love all and to serve all.” As part of this immersion in all things Spanish I spent two weeks living with a Spanish family, sharing meals with them and watching an unending stream of Mexican telenovellas.
Things started pretty encouragingly when Hugo had written the aims and objectives of the two week course on the board as I arrived on Day 1. Initially my enthusiasm was boundless and the first couple of days began with an introduction to the verbs in all their various forms. By Day 3 though it started to becomes clear that the aims and objectives of Day 1 were quickly forgotten and instead we’d spent relentlessly tedious hours reading over verbs and random articles in magazines that I couldn’t understand. I was at the Sesame Street stage of Spanish and Hugo was half expecting me to translate Ulysses. I can barely read the fucking thing in English. So it continued for the rest of the week. I’d explain my very basic language needs, Hugo would acknowledge them and then completely ignore them. His motto was rapidly becoming “To love all and to teach fuck all.”
Meanwhile over with the family, things were progressing pretty smoothly. I had my own room and three meals a day which offered the best chance of interaction with the family. Truth is that I couldn’t understand a word of what the mother or father were saying but fortunately their daughter understood that I was patently hopeless when it came to Spanish and spoke to me like I was Forrest Gump. This left things awkward at mealtimes as the family spoke less because there was a stranger in their midst and I spoke little because I didn’t know how to. Many times I’d begin a sentence only to be half way through and realise that I didn’t have the words to finish it. Everyone would stare, waiting to hear what I had to say but I’d give up and reach for the spoon and shovel some soup into my mouth. As the two weeks passed though I did develop the ability to sprinkle some banal sentences throughout mealtimes which made it seem like I was making an effort. In typical Irish fashion though, many of these were about the weather.
Back in the classroom with Hugo things didn’t improve. Hugo is from the school of teachers who believe that once something unknown is written down it automatically becomes known. The few things I felt that I had understood previously - use of direct and indirect objects for one - Hugo managed to unravel completely. We’d spend an hour each day watching a film in Spanish which would have been fine if there were some activities based on the film but no. So it was that I had to sit through ‘Love In The Time Of Cholera’ with Spanish subtitles. If you’ve seen the film you’ll feel my pain. Ironically enough, Spanish seems to be a relatively straightforward language to learn. Here’s a pretty good example of what I mean. Opening the English-Spanish dictionary under S, here’s five consecutive words and their Spanish translation;
soccer - futbol
sociable - sociable
social - social
socialism - socialismo
society - sociedad
At one stage I even looked up the translation of ‘bestseller’ to find the word ‘bestseller’. Magic. Who could not love a language like this? Who could not teach a language like this? Well, Hugo for one. By the end of the course, by accident or design I’ve managed to develop the ability to converse at a very basic level and have two more months left to work on that. I just hope Bolivians like to talk about the weather.