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21/12/06 02:32I talked to someone in Spanish today yay!
My Spanish is not awful, but I have such a mental block about it.
In Montreal, I spoke French to people, though my French is not great. In Japan, I spoke Japanese to people, though my Japanese was not great. Sometimes people would switch to English, and would hurt my feelings, a little. This was all mixed up in pride for my own language skills, desire to show respect for other people's culture and language, and a wish not to be treated the slightest bit differently, to show my own self-sufficiency. (I just finished reading a Tanizaki short story about a blind koto player who reacts with rage when people make her too aware of her own disability. She reminds me of me). And I do project this onto my Latino/a patrons, not (I think) entirely wrongly; I think many of them are very proud of their own English abilities. And they are rightly angry about stereotypes that foreigners don't want to learn English. (I just checked out sixty Curious George and Berenstain Bears books for a little Latino kid, and this is typical. Oh, yes, they're learning English.) Not that I should be spuriously generalizing, or anything.
But it's not that I think about all this and then deliberately decide to use English. I think about all this in my spare time, and then when the opportunity presents itself, I am so taken with anxiety that I cannot remember buenos dias.*
So I am proud of myself just for using a few sentences, when it seemed necessary. It will get easier in time.
*The phonological similarities between Spanish and Japanese are enough to throw me into dire confusion. Phrases come to mind like quieres modoru-los?.
My Spanish is not awful, but I have such a mental block about it.
In Montreal, I spoke French to people, though my French is not great. In Japan, I spoke Japanese to people, though my Japanese was not great. Sometimes people would switch to English, and would hurt my feelings, a little. This was all mixed up in pride for my own language skills, desire to show respect for other people's culture and language, and a wish not to be treated the slightest bit differently, to show my own self-sufficiency. (I just finished reading a Tanizaki short story about a blind koto player who reacts with rage when people make her too aware of her own disability. She reminds me of me). And I do project this onto my Latino/a patrons, not (I think) entirely wrongly; I think many of them are very proud of their own English abilities. And they are rightly angry about stereotypes that foreigners don't want to learn English. (I just checked out sixty Curious George and Berenstain Bears books for a little Latino kid, and this is typical. Oh, yes, they're learning English.) Not that I should be spuriously generalizing, or anything.
But it's not that I think about all this and then deliberately decide to use English. I think about all this in my spare time, and then when the opportunity presents itself, I am so taken with anxiety that I cannot remember buenos dias.*
So I am proud of myself just for using a few sentences, when it seemed necessary. It will get easier in time.
*The phonological similarities between Spanish and Japanese are enough to throw me into dire confusion. Phrases come to mind like quieres modoru-los?.