Mi historias de viajes 3: the languages used on this trip

Hola! We're now into part 3 on my stories from South America! Allow me to talk about a topic that is very close to my heart and one of the main reasons why I took this trip: languages. Now you may think: you went to South America, surely this is about Spanish right? Obviously that's a good place to start but I certainly used more than just Spanish on this trip. 

Spain Spanish vs South American Spanish

Now I had a 10 hour stopover in Madrid on my way to Montevideo as I flew with Iberia and it was a little warm up for my Spanish. I remember having a long conversation entirely in Spanish with the lady at the tourist information booth in Madrid airport - I was planning my super quick trip into the city center with her help. Even though she probably could speak English, we spoke entirely in Spanish and had no difficulty at all understanding each other. Spanish is my fourth language after English, French and Mandarin (in that order) and modesty aside, despite never having had any formal lessons in Spanish, it is pretty good. I wouldn't say it is fluent but I could quite happily chat to that lady in Madrid and tell her about my trip to South America all in Spanish without having to use any English words. Then I arrived in Uruguay the next day and holy shit: I encountered South American Spanish. The irony was that because I speak Spanish (albeit with a standard Madrid accent) and the people in Uruguay understood me fine, I couldn't understand them. Imagine if you spoke English and then landed in somewhere like Johannesburg or Glasgow where the local accent is particularly strong, you're still speaking the same language but suddenly everything has become ten times harder. Now South American people consume a lot of media from Spain, so they have no problems understanding someone who speaks with a Madrid accent but the reverse wasn't true for me as I had yet to consume enough South American media. I would compare this to an American tourist feeling very lost in Singapore - the Singaporeans would have no problems understanding American English as they have all watched loads of American movies and TV programmes over the years, but the American is encountering Singlish or English with a very strong Singaporean accent for the very first time.

Just how different is the Spanish in South America? Allow me to construct a table below to illustrate my point:

Strawberry
Madrid: Fresa
South America: Frutilla

Peach 
Madrid: Melocoton
South America: Durazno

Bus
Madrid: Autobus
South America: Collectivo (or sometimes bus)

Okay
Madrid: Vale (pronounced ba-ley)
South America: Dale (pronounced da-ley)

You (informal, amongst friends)
Madrid: Tu
South America: Vos

Computer
Madrid: Ordenador
South America: Computador

Pen (ie. what you write with) 
Madrid: Pluma
South America: Lapicera

That's just a taster of how extremely different even common words are in South America! Sometimes it feels like I am dealing with a different dialect, such as when I am struggling to have a conversation in Cantonese or Hokkien when I am essentially a Mandarin speaker. Think about the pineapple example in Chinese: 黄梨 vs 菠萝 or 凤梨. And once you get past the vocabulary, there is the accent. Even words that are seemingly identical can be totally different. So for example:

Onion
Madrid: Cebolla (pronounced The-bo-ya)
South America: Cebolla (pronounced Se-bo-ja but with a French J not an English J)

And I have to be careful with certain words such as Coger.  

Quiero coger eso autobus. 
Translation from Madrid Spanish: I want to take this bus.
Translation from South American Spanish: I want to fuck this bus.

Yeah, so when I am in Spain, I am quite happily chatting away with the locals but when I am in South America, I really have to ask the locals to speak slowly and clearly as I really struggled to understand them. The frustrating thing of course is that they understand my Spanish perfectly but I had a lot more difficulty in understanding their Spanish - but it also varied as well. You see, loads of migrant workers from poorer parts of Latin America go work in the big cities Chile and Argentina - I actually found the Peruvian and Colombian accents easier to understand than the local Argentinian accent. I had a really long conversation with a Colombian lady from Bogota working in a restaurant in Santiago, Chile - her Spanish accent was relatively easy to understand and we understood each other well enough to have a pretty interesting conversation. However, there was this waiter in a restaurant in Mendoza, Argentina whose accent was simply impossible to understand - like he was speaking in Spanish but I could understand less than half of what he was saying. I didn't know if he was a local from Mendoza or a migrant worker from another part of Latin America but good grief, he told me there was a problem with our bill when we tried to pay but all I got was that there was a discrepancy of 20 pesos (about £0.30 or S$0.50). So I tried asking him, do you want me to pay 20 pesos more? No, he didn't. And then I asked him, so do you need to give me back 20 pesos? No, that wasn't the case either - he then launched into a really long explanation which I understood very little of. In the end, we just left on the worse case scenario that we had left him a 20 peso tip because I was defeated by his very strong accent and of course, no one else in that restaurant spoke any English at all.

English (as spoken by the South Americans)

Is English spoken in Uruguay, Argentina and Chile? Very little but again, this requires a little explanation. So if you go to a major tourist attraction or if you visit a 5-star hotel, then yeah sure they will speak some English but the level of English you may encounter will vary. Take something like the tourist information offices for example - thankfully, they are found all over Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. But do they speak English? It varies. I have encountered people at these tourists information offices who speak English perfectly (often with an American accent) to the lady in Buenos Aires who struggled on so painfully in English that I switched to Spanish for her to the older women in the offices in Esquel and Valparaiso who were monolingual Spanish speakers and didn't even speak a word of English at all. So yeah, generally I would just speak Spanish and sometimes they would offer to switch to English (which I would gratefully accept) but most of the time, if you're traveling around South America independently, you simply have to speak Spanish. And if you don't, you had better learn the basics to order food from a menu, to buy a ticket at the train station or ask for directions in order to make your life a lot easier. Once in a while you will encounter a random person who will speak English well (such as the cashier in a small supermarket in Buenos Aires for example) but those instances are few and far in between. In fact there are far more Italian speakers than English speakers in Argentina given the very large number of Italian immigrants. 

So why is the general standard of English so shockingly low in this part of the world then? Well, the first reason is obvious: Latin America is homogeneously Spanish speaking with the exception of Brazil which is Portuguese speaking, but even then Portuguese and Spanish are close enough for the Brazilians to understand a lot of Spanish and vice versa. In fact many Brazilians have a pretty good grasp of Spanish and don't have to make a lot of effort to be perfectly understood in Spanish speaking countries. So for example, when I was in the ski shop in Cerro Catedral outside Bariloche, the guy who served me spoke both Spanish and Portuguese but no English - this is because the vast majority of the people who skied there are Latin American Spanish speakers with a small number of Portuguese speaking Brazilian tourists, whilst you might get the odd American or Canadian tourist once in a while, there are so few of them in that part of Argentina. So really, there's not much need for the locals there to learn English unless they are working for a company that is say dealing with English speaking clients in England, Australia and America. Furthermore, all American TV programmes and movies are dubbed into Argentinian Spanish, so that removes an important opportunity for the local population to learn English through entertainment - that's a really dumb move, but shockingly enough, that's done in so many countries from Germany to Russia to Argentina. It is such an obvious way to introduce English to a large number of people, but for some reason they just don't trust the viewing public to read subtitles. That's why people speak English so well in countries like Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands because they would never dub American programmes on TV.

Welsh and Patagonian Welsh

Well this was one of the main reasons why I went on this trip - I am fluent in Welsh and Patagonia province in Argentina is one of the only places outside Wales where Welsh is spoken! There used to be several million Welsh speakers around over a 150 years ago, that figured has dwindled to about 500,000 with some knowledge of Welsh - now I treat that figure with great suspicion because I have some knowledge of Korean for example (thanks to my interest in K-pop) but I would claim to speak Korean at all, far from it. If you were to only consider those who are properly fluent in Welsh and can have a conversation entirely in Welsh without using another language, then that figure is probably somewhere between 50,000 to 100,000 at best. Thus we have the bizarre situation where the vast majority of Welsh people (complete with Welsh surnames, born and raised in Wales etc) cannot speak Welsh and they speak English instead. That situation is similar to what has happened to a lot of Native American tribes in the USA where the younger generation only speak English and can't speak their ancestors' language. So being a fluent Welsh speaker means I'm part of a very exclusive (and very small) club of people - if you turn up in Latin America speaking Spanish, big fat hair deal, nobody gives a fuck because it's one of the world's most spoken languages. Or if you run into another English speaker whilst on your travels, again, zero fucks are given. But gosh the welcome I received in Patagonia as I rolled into Trevelin as the first Asian person who speaks Welsh fluently that they've ever met (I am sure there must be other Asian people in Wales who speak Welsh fluently, but they just never visited Argentina), it was pretty surreal. The kids there just assumed I am from Wales because I speak Welsh and I had to explain that I am actually from Singapore, but had studied Welsh for about 9 years.

So why are there people in Argentina speaking Welsh? Let me summarize the story in a nutshell. The English effectively invaded and colonized Wales; over the centuries of English domination, a lot of effort was made to force the Welsh to assimilate and that meant replacing Welsh with English as the language of education, business and government. In 1865, a group of Welsh people said fuck this (or probably something like fuckio'n hwn) and left Wales for Argentina to establish a Welsh colony there - the part of Patagonia where they settled is a very remote area with very few natives, mind you Argentina still remains extremely sparsely populated up till today. It was the perfect opportunity for the Welsh migrants to preserve their own language, culture and way of life - far away from the hands of the English oppressors. That's why there are about 5,000 Welsh speakers in Patagonia today, I grant you that is not a lot but at least they are geographically concentrated in a few towns, enough to make an impact locally. Compare that to the situation in USA, where there are estimated to be approximately 2,500 Welsh speakers there today but spread out over a very large area, over many states. Most of the descendants of Welsh migrants today have assimilated and speak Spanish as a first language today, but fortunately there are still bilingual Welsh-Spanish schools in the area and a genuinely effort to keep Welsh alive in Patagonia. Many of the original Welsh settlers simply assimilated and their children became 100% Spanish speaking out of practicality - who are you going to speak Welsh to when you live in a predominantly Spanish speaking country? I guess that's the same reason why my father never bothered teaching me his mother tongue Hakka.

A huge effort has been made in Wales to revive the Welsh language in the last 20 years or so and this has actually led to a standardization in Patagonian Welsh - in Wales, there are two main dialects: Northern and Southern Welsh. Whilst in Patagonia, they speak a form of Welsh which is a blend of the two. The two dialects are distinct but still mutually intelligible with some effort. Let me give you an example with a simple sentence to illustrate just how different they are:

English: I have a dog.
Northern Welsh: Mae gen i gi.
Southern Welsh: Mae ci gyda fi.

I am a Southern Welsh speaker, so if I were to say 'mae ci gyda fi' a Northern Welsh speaker would understand what I meant and vice versa, though I would not naturally use their grammar structure. I think it is impractical to have two dialects when there are so, so few of us who actually do speak Welsh - but historically, Northern and Southern Welsh are very distinct and different and the purists who want to keep it that way rather than artificially create just one form of Welsh for everyone. Well, be it by accident or design, somehow in Patagonia, we do have one form of Welsh that is a blend of the two dialects. And of course, in Wales, most Welsh speakers would use a large amount of loanwords from English. There's a famous line from a S4C series Un Bore Mercher when Faith returns home to find the police in her house without a search warrant and she screams, "dw i'n moyn i ti fuckio off!" (I want you to fuck off!) However, in Patagonia, when the locals would turn to Spanish for their loan words to fill in the gaps when they don't have the vocabulary to speak only in Welsh. A good example is the word 'pasiwch' - which is to enter, that's when you say to invite someone into your office when they arrive, like 'enter'. In Wales we would say 'dewch i mewn' (come on in) but pasiwch sounds a lot more like the Spanish word 'pase' (which would function as 'enter' in English), but they have conjugated pase as if it was a Welsh verb and thus have come up with a new word 'pasiwch'. Some loan words are conjugated as if they are Welsh verbs whilst others are lifted directly from Spanish and dropped into the middle of a sentence as Spanish loan words without any adulteration at all. So even totally fluent Welsh speakers from Wales would struggle to understand Patagonian Welsh if they didn't speak Spanish fluently - hence given that I speak both, I really had a lot of fun with them.

I went to visit the Welsh school in Esquel and participated in a Welsh class with two teachers: one from North Wales who spoke only English and Welsh and had a very basic grasp of Spanish, whilst the other local teacher spoke Spanish and Welsh with only a basic grasp of English - there were only about 7 students in the class so the teacher to student ratio was fantastic. The teacher from Wales had been sent there by the Welsh government, but given that he didn't speak Spanish, this pairing up with a local teacher was a necessity and it was just brilliant to have been in an environment where Welsh is essentially taught through Spanish and the biggest challenge the students faced were the words of English origin. So for example, the Welsh word for breakfast is brecwast - which does sound very close to English of course, but given that the Spanish word for breakfast is desayuno, it would come across as a lot more foreign and unfamiliar for the students in Patagonia. Indeed, the Welsh language has been revived to the extent where Welsh-speaking students from Patagonia are now able to go to some universities in Wales to do a degree entirely in Welsh - so that means they need not necessarily be studying for a degree in the Welsh language, but they get to do all their lectures, tutorials in Welsh and they can submit their coursework, do their exams entirely in Welsh and not English. This is made entirely possible purely by a group of Welsh speakers who are determined to rescue their language from the jaws of extinction, because it is co-existing with two of the world's most spoken languages: English and Spanish and it is thus so easy for a minority language like that to simply wither away as ordinary folks assimilate to make their life easier.

So which is better: my Welsh or my Spanish?

I have always wondered which is better - my Welsh or my Spanish. I have actually studied Welsh formally for many years and have paper qualifications in Welsh whilst I never ever took a single lesson in Spanish in my life, nunca jamas. So whilst I spent so many hours painfully conjugating Welsh verbs, I merely picked up Spanish very casually from watch TV programmes like La Casa de Papel, movies, listening to Latino pop and chatting with my Spanish-speaking friends. So when I got to Patagonia, I had the choice to express myself in either Welsh or Spanish and I had always thought that my Welsh was somewhat better than my Spanish given how I have never ever studied Spanish formally before. But guess what? It turned out that my Spanish is actually a lot better than my Welsh - the reasons were obvious. I have had far more opportunities over the last 20 years to speak Spanish whilst it is extremely hard to find another person for me to have a proper conversation in Welsh given how few of us there are. So whilst I can construct grammatically perfect sentences in Welsh to express complex ideas, I struggle to understand when the other person replies as I just haven't had enough conversational practice in Welsh whilst I speak Spanish several times a week in London because of my many Spanish friends. Perhaps my Spanish grammar isn't as perfect as my Welsh grammar, but when it comes to actually having a real conversation with someone in Patagonia, well it was far easier to do it in Spanish (Argentinian accent notwithstanding) than Welsh. So yes, Spanish is now officially my fourth language after English, French and Mandarin whilst I am relegating Welsh to my fifth language as it is obvious that my Spanish is now better than my Welsh.

German, Italian, French and Mandarin 

I did use my German, Italian and French as well on this trip as I encountered quite a few people who were descendants of migrants from Germany, Italy and France - most of them still speak their mother tongues on top of Spanish of course, but it was not always the case. Sometimes you can come across someone with a German sounding surname but they would be so totally assimilated that they don't speak a word of German. A lot of this really depends on whether or not their parents made any effort trying to teach them their mother tongue, as the vast majority of education would be conducted in only Spanish. I did however also get to use my Mandarin in Chile - goodness me, whilst there were virtually no Chinese people in Uruguay and only a tiny number in Argentina, they seemed to be everywhere in Chile. There was a Chinatown in Santiago and I visited a shopping center called 'Mall Chino' where signs were in Spanish and Chinese. The Chinese in Chile weren't just in Santiago, but they had a huge presence in Valparaiso as well, a much smaller city about 115 km from Santiago. They mostly ran shops where they sold a wide array of goods from clothes to shoes to kitchenware to toys to electrical goods to just about anything you could import from China - obviously in these Chinese shop, I could speak Mandarin there. Frustratingly enough, there were very few Chinese restaurants and the few that I tried were disappointing. They were trying to cater to the local tastes - perhaps there were more high end Chinese restaurants that tried to serve more authentic Chinese food, but I failed to locate those in Santiago. Interestingly enough, Miniso has a presence in Chile but there are plenty of other copycat Chinese stores trying to do exactly the same thing.

So there you go, that's all the languages I used in this trip - what do you think? Have you ever been to a country where you think you speak the language but really struggled understanding the locals who have a really strong accent? Have you ever traveled to South America and what were your experiences like trying to communicate with the locals? How would you prepare for a very long trip across South America? Leave a comment below please - many thanks for reading!