Adventuring en Espanol

(Ushuaia Harbor and the Beagle Channel, named for Darwin's ship)

I’ll be spending the next few months in South America, making my slow way up the western edge of the continent. Which means that I’ll be moving through several varieties of Spanish language (the accents, the idioms) as I go.  

I'm embarrassed to admit that I feel so disoriented among these Spanish-speakers.  By all logic, I shouldn’t, really, given all the Spanish that surrounds me:  our near national neighbors to the south, the fluency of my kids and my brother in the language, Jay’s Puerto Rican origins, and the welcome native speech of B’s lovely AJ.  Moreover, I’ve been to this very location before, when my kids and I hiked around in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia a couple of years ago, though I freely confess that I was completely dependent on E and B for all Spanish-language interactions on that trip.

Moreover, I understand Italian fairly well, and Latin very well, and so you’d think that Spanish would be relatively near to my apprehension. After all, Spanish is a Romance language and near to Italian, but (as my amused and mortified kids can attest) that proximity seems to make Spanish somehow more confusing for me, more brain-stuttering.  Maybe it’s the proximity itself that makes the problem:  When I was down here with the boys in 2023, I would role-play brief ordering scenarios with them before the restaurant waiter came to our table, trying to ingrain the Spanish in my mind.  Then the waiter would come and I would smoothly say, with a nonchalant smile, Per favore, signore, vorrei due empanade di verdure.  I think that my brain just glitches, overwriting the slightly familiar with the more familiar when it runs up against a block—for, now I think about it, I have also requested my bill in Rome thusly: Posso avere il conto nunc?  Adesso is Italian for now; nunc is now in… Latin.  Right location, wrong century.

I’m particularly frustrated by my Spanish-language disorientation because I’ve spent several months in the not-too-distant past navigating through countries where the primary language (Kyrgyz, anyone?, or Uzbek?) was completely opaque to me, and the secondary language (either Russian or Arabic) was too.  Why, then, should this much more familiar language system throw me off so much?  I suppose that no one in Kyrgyzstan had even the slightest expectation that I might be familiar with Kyrgyz, so they were deeply forgiving of my ignorance. With all the Spanish in my vicinity, I really don’t have any excuse for not knowing how to do much more than order dos empanadas badly.  My ignorance in Spanish makes me feel sheepish and self-conscious.  Which probably just intensifies the brain-crashing. 

(Pan de Indio, an edible fungus that grows in Tierra del Fuego trees and bushes)