Panama diary entry 4: on my relationship with Spanish

Hola amigos, que tal? In this fourth post from my experience in Panama, I am going to talk about my relationship with Spanish because it is my fourth language. However, unlike my first three languages, I have never ever taken a single lesson in Spanish before - it is entirely self-taught without the help of a teacher. I have studied four languages formally over the years: English, French, Mandarin-Chinese and Welsh; my first language is English, followed by French and Chinese. When I visited the bilingual region of Patagonia in Argentina in 2019, I wanted to find out if my Welsh was better than my Spanish, given that that was the only place in the world where both Welsh and Spanish are spoken whereas in Wales, it is too easy to simply default to English there. The conclusion was that my Spanish is much better than my Welsh for the simple reason that I am regularly exposed to Spanish all the time, as opposed to Welsh which is a minority language spoken by very few on a regular basis. I have been able to do business meetings in all five languages over the years, that's never an issue in my top three languages which are at native level fluency, but in this post, I'll focus on what my experiences are like operating in Spanish, my fourth language (inspired by my recent experiences in Spain and Panama) and how my relationship with Spanish has developed over the years. I feel like I should do this in Spanish but I really want to encourage my readers to learn Spanish and thus, I will post in English in order to reach a wider audience. 

It all started back in 2001.

I started learning Spanish in 2001 after a trip to Madrid with my hubby - back then, I didn't claim to be able to speak Spanish. It was my first time in Spain and I was very excited, it was a country I had always wanted to visit and thus in preparation for the trip, I memorized some Spanish phrases to be able to use. It was no more than the basics to be used when asking for directions, speaking to the waiter in the restaurant or the hotel and learning to recognize important words like entrance, exit, closed, no entry etc. It was at that stage when something just clicked, "some of it is a lot like French", which is hardly surprising of course given that the two countries share a long border and also have the same Latin roots. I didn't think I was going to pick it up that quickly as my hubby also spoke French quite fluently, but his knowledge of Spanish is extremely limited (I'm being generous here). He has managed to memorize a few basic phrases but struggles to understand the locals when they say anything in reply to him. I recall the moment I stepped up and took over as the designated Spanish speaker: remember back in 2001, I didn't think I could speak Spanish. My hubby has visited Spain many times before, so on our very first day in Madrid, we wanted to get ice creams as it was a hot day, so he proudly went up to the counter and ordered two ice creams. When the lady at the counter asked him, "para llevar o comer aqui?" He couldn't understand her at all and asked if she spoke English - she didn't. I then said, "I think she asked if it was to take away or if we are having it here." Yup, that was the Eureka moment that I realized that I will get quite far in Spanish. 

Communicating vs passing an exam

On that trip to Madrid, I remember being able to communicate with a lot of the locals who spoke very little or no English at all. The key lesson that I took away from that experience is that being able to speak a foreign language is about facilitating communication rather than getting every word right like in an exam. The Spanish that I spoke back then was full of mistakes, the grammar was all wrong and I would use a lot of French or English words when I didn't know the word in Spanish but it still allowed me to communicate with the locals. If I had tried to take a Spanish exam after that trip in 2001, I would have probably failed any kind of exam! But nonetheless, that made me realize that you don't need to pass an exam in order to be able to communicate in a foreign language, you simply have to make an effort to communicate with the other party by making the most of what you do have. Mind you, if I tried to take an exam today in Spanish, I still probably wouldn't score well - I think I might be able to pass but it would still be full of mistakes. The frustrated Spanish teacher would probably shake her head at me and say, "I bet you didn't study for the test, did you Alex? That is why you have made all these silly mistakes!" A major part of learning any language is the grammar and Spanish grammar is not easy: when I was in Panama City, I had a rather terrifying experience which I have covered in a recent blog post. Someone tried to rob me in the street and I was chased down the street by a man wielding a big knife. When I found some policemen, I realized, "ah I have to explain to them what happened in the past tense and I hope I remember how to conjugate my verbs in the past tense." I must have made quite a few mistakes then but regardless, they understood me. 

Habia vs hubo

So allow me to show you how different Spanish can be to English and why it is difficult: if I wanted to say, "there was a man with a knife who tried to attack me", I have the choice of two words habia and hubo to be the equivalent of 'there was' in Spanish. I would use habia to describe an situation like lasted quite a while without a definitive beginning or end, "I couldn't sleep well last night as there was a lot of noise in the street outside." So in this situation, the noise situation persisted all night long for several hours, it wasn't clear when it started or finish. But hubo would describe an action that had completed in the past, "Yesterday at precisely 3:37 pm, there was a massive explosion outside the train station. There have been reports of many casualties as a result of the explosion." So we know from that sentence that this explosion happened at precisely 3:37 pm and given the nature of explosions, it probably lasted no more than a few seconds. Note that in English, we don't have that distinction - we just use "there was" in both cases. So just imagine me trying to decide between using habia and hubo when describing what happened to the policemen, I chose to go with hubo instead of habia because that attack happened suddenly. I was walking down the street when this man with a knife appeared out of nowhere and threatened to kill me unless I gave him everything. That episode is finished, the action has reached a conclusion and it ended after I was able to escape by running away. Someone who speaks Spanish fluently would automatically know whether to use hubo or habia; I had to think that one through, it doesn't come naturally to me.

How much of an advantage is a knowledge of French?

My French is better than my Chinese but still not as good as my English. A major reason why I have managed to figure out Spanish on my own is because I did study French to a very high level and speak it fluently. However, it doesn't mean that French and Spanish are so identical they are mutually intelligible. The French grammar system is more similar to Spanish than English but the vocabulary is extremely different - this meant that I had to do a lot of rote learning to expand my vocabulary in Spanish. Here is a short list of common words to show you how French and Spanish can be different: 

English	French	Spanish
Apple	Pomme	Manzana
Carrot	Carotte	Zanahoria
Peach	Pêche	Melocotón (Spain) or Durazno (Latam)
Car	Voiture	Coche
Lunch	Dejeuner	Almuerzo
Ice	Glace	Hielo
Dog	Chien	Perro
I’m thirsty.	J’ai soif.	Tengo sed.
My sister is sick.	Ma soeur est malade.	Mi hermana está enferma.

You can see from that table that in some cases, French is closer to English than Spanish (in the case of carrot and peach) and there's just no way you could guess that the word in Spanish for shoes is zapatos even if you knew the word chaussures in French. That's why you would often see French and Spanish people using English to communicate with each other if they have both learnt English at school, simply having a similar grammar system doesn't help you bridge the gap when it comes to the vocabulary when they are so different. I suppose the advantage I had in speaking French mostly came from the fact that I mastered French as an adult - I only started learning French at the age of 18 and I really only embraced the idea that I could speak Spanish at the age of 25. Many people make the assumption that only children can pick up a new language but I disagree with that. Having mastered French as an adult gave me the confidence that I could learn another foreign language but I still had to invest hours of hard work in order to accumulate the necessary vocabulary in Spanish. There are plenty of great apps like Duolingo to help you accumulate that vocabulary but otherwise, I like to watch films in Spanish simply to allow the words to wash over me whilst I am being entertained. So if a character in the film shouts, "¡Escúchame!" And the subtitles read, "Listen to me!" Then I simply bank that piece of information subconsciously, it is a passive form of learning that works for me - my brain can process it all very efficiently. 

It is more than learning a language, it is embracing the culture.

I remember going to Albrook Mall in Panama City and hearing the story 'Chantaje' by Shakira as I entered a store, I really like that song and recognized it instantly. I had to stop myself from singing along as there was this sense of, "oh yeah, I like the music these people listen to, I certainly do fit in here, we have plenty in common." I think that feeling I experienced at that moment summarizes the way I feel about my ability not just to speak Spanish but my knowledge about various aspects of Spanish/Latino culture. It is something I have embraced wholeheartedly and I'm proud of just how far I have managed to get not just in terms of actually speaking Spanish but in being able to connect with people I have met from all over Latin America and Spain. So just to give you an example, I had a driver who took me from the airport to the hotel in Panama City - so when I found out that he was actually Colombian rather than Panamanian, we started talking about Shakira as she is Colombian. Had he been Panamanian, I would have talked to him instead about the music of Lorna Aponte - possibly Panama's most famous singer. Lorna never became as famous as Shakira, but she did top the charts in France in 2003. Most of all, I love the reaction of people when they hear me speak Spanish because they can't quite place my Spanish accent. I seem to have learnt Spanish in Spain given the way I pronounce words like cielo (sky) as 'thielo' rather than 'sielo' but I also use South American expressions - such as my preference for using the word 'dale' rather than 'vale' to mean 'okay' in Spanish, but then, I would also throw in the odd French word sometimes.

My accent confuses Spanish-speaking people. 

Thus my accent in Spanish confuses most people because there's no simple narrative - I once met a Malaysian guy in London who spoke Spanish well, that's because he once worked in a Chinese restaurant in Nerja. Thus has lived there for many years and there's where he learnt how to speak Spanish so his Spanish is of the Southern-Andalusian variety. His teacher was his ex-wife, as he was working in the restaurant all the time, he was simply too busy to attend classes so she taught him whilst she worked alongside him in the restaurant - thus there was even a very clear source for his accent, he merely took on his ex-wife's accent as she was the only Spanish teacher he ever had. I recognized his accent as I've actually been to Nerja before. But like my English, my Spanish accent is impossible to place because it is entirely self-taught, thus my accent cannot be traced back to one specific source location like "Nerja, Andalucia" where I learnt Spanish because I learnt it mostly in London through the internet on my own. Mind you, I like that actually, as my accent usually a conversation starter when I meet people who speak Spanish. So when I was in Panama, I got chatting to one of the friendly managers at the hotel where I stayed and he was very intrigued why I spoke Spanish as he couldn't place my accent. The hotel manager had worked all over the Spanish speaking world - from Spain to the Dominican Republic to Miami to Panama. He considered himself very good at identifying regional Spanish accents, but mine totally baffled him.

Is there a sense of community amongst Spanish speakers?

If you speak English (evidently you do as you're reading an article written in English), then you're not part of any kind of special club as it is the world's most spoken language. Likewise, the same thing applies for Mandarin-Chinese, it is the world's second most spoken language and you're just not that special. At the other end of the scale, if you happen to speak a minority language like Welsh which is spoken by a tiny number of people (Welsh is a minority language within Wales for crying out aloud), then your ability to speak Welsh will put you in a more exclusive group of people who would feel a strong affinity to a fellow Welsh speaker. The fewer the speakers, the stronger this bond will be and it is pretty strong when it comes to the Welsh-speaking community. However, Spanish is the fourth most spoken language in the world after English, Mandarin-Chinese and Hindi-Urdu - it is spoken by a total of 592 million people around the world. I always use the figure that includes people who speak it as a second or foreign language rather than only those who speak it as a mother tongue, because we need to recognize that we live in a world where people can be effectively multilingual. But here's an interesting statistic for you: even as the world's fourth most spoken language, Spanish is only spoken by 7.2% of the world's population. I once met an elderly Mexican couple who were asking for directions in the West End of London and they were struggling in English, so when I switched to Spanish to communicate with them, oh you should have seen just how delighted they were. Thus given the right context, that sense of 'community' can be there.

Hardly anyone spoke any English in Panama.

The main difference between Welsh and Spanish speakers is that all Welsh speakers also speak English fluently, in fact most speak English as a first language and Welsh as a second language - even those who speak Welsh fluently as a first language (like my teacher Owain) would also speak English equally well as a first language too. After all, you're never going to find a monolingual Welsh speaker as Wales has been colonized by the English a long time ago and they've nearly wiped out the Welsh language. Allow me to share with you one aspect of life in Panama - labour is very cheap, wages are so low for the working class and there's always an endless supply of poor people seeking work. So your average shop in the shopping mall will have plenty of staff ready to serve you and they're not exactly well trained - sometimes I get the feeling that they are more like security staff to make sure you know you're being watched closely so you will not even contemplate shoplifting there. The moment you walk into the shop, the shop assistant will greet you and ask you what you're looking for, if they could help you procure that item. It's not like I'm walking into a pharmacy with a prescription in my hand - often when I go shopping, I am not looking for anything specific but happy to be pleasantly surprised by what I may discover at the mall and make a spontaneous purchase. So in order to get these sales assistants to leave me to browse in peace, I would often say, "excuse me, I'm so sorry, I'm a tourist and I don't speak any Spanish, can you speak English please?" They will then back off and leave me alone because they didn't speak English.

What is your default factory settings?

I was in Panama for a conference and I did meet people from all over Latin America at the event, some of whom spoke very little English. Of course I took great pride in being able to communicate with them in Spanish and it really thrills me when they speak to me in Spanish because it is a sign that they are giving me honorary Latino status, an accolade which I wear with a huge sense of pride. I was at the event with an English colleague who spoke no Spanish and he was virtually ignored by the delegates who didn't speak English as there was no way they could communicate with him. Thus I felt like I had earned my way into this community by proving that I am Latino enough in not just my ability to speak Spanish but also having enough knowledge of their culture. I contrast that with the situation with my father: his cultural identity is Chinese but well, he is Chinese. No one has ever questioned the fact that he is indeed Chinese, that's just his factory default setting. He was a Chinese man, born in a Chinese family with Chinese parents, speaking a mix of Hakka, Mandarin, Hokkien and Cantonese as he grew up (whilst stubbornly refusing to learn English). How can you a sense of accomplishment or pride if you are simply defaulting to your factory settings? Don't get me wrong, actually the vast majority of people in the world do exactly that - they default to their factory settings when it comes to their cultural identity but that's why I really feel so very proud when I could earn my honorary Latino status at that conference in Panama - I didn't do the obvious and that's what makes me special. This is what makes me who I am and thus it defines my identity. 

Where do I go from here with Spanish?

So whenever I get put in a Spanish speaking environment like that, I do often feel like I should work hard to improve my Spanish - I did spend half of May in two Spanish speaking countries (Spain and Panama) and thus I definitely improved my Spanish in that month. Therein lies a choice I am facing all the time as a polyglot: do I focus on my fourth language Spanish to try to make it at least as fluent as my French and Mandarin? Or do I say, my Spanish is good enough for what I need it for, nobody is expecting me to be totally fluent in it anyway, so I should spend my effort learning other languages from Swahili to Xhosa to Bengali that I have very little knowledge of? I guess the decision has got to be guided by the principle of ROI; return on investment. If I am going to be doing a lot more business in Latin America and thus would have a significant advantage by speaking Spanish really fluently, then sure it would make sense in that case to focus on improving my Spanish. But if that's not really the case and I'm simply looking to stretch my mind, challenge myself and experience a different culture, then I might actually enjoy learning a language like Xhosa a lot more. The greatest sense of reward one gets when learning a new language is in the early stages when you can feel yourself making quite significant improvements in a short space of time as you go from nothing to a little bit - yeah I've experienced that with Spanish over 20 years ago already, I need to learn a language like Xhosa or Bengali to experience that all over again but the question is just how useful would basic Xhosa or Bengali will be for me, compared to a greater mastery of Spanish? 

So that's it from me on this topic. Of course, I haven't managed to cover everything from this trip to Panama and I may try to see if I can do a short piece to cover some of the other aspects of life in Panama that I had observed but it will depend if I have anything more urgent to post in the meantime. So if you wish to see more content from that trip, you can always visit my Instagram. What do you think? Do you speak Spanish and if so, how good is your Spanish? Do you have a second or foreign language and what is your relationship to that language? What does it mean to you? So are there languages you wish to learn or one that you wish to improve? Please leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.