I'm a good talker.
I am what you'd call a great conversationalist. No, really, I'm not bragging or boasting.
I can find out anything that interests you and get you talking. If you are resistant at first, I will seduce you with words. If you are as talkative as I am, I will be quiet and take it all in. If you are ten times more talkative than I am (which is rare but possible) I will quickly get bored of you, but I will still talk to you.
I write, and therefore my command of conversational English is strengthened by my writing skills. Sometimes, though, my conversational language gets mixed in with my writing, and I tend to bend the rules of grammar to suit my needs. This causes my writing to suffer.
When I talk, I definitely need a script. I express myself better with the written word. Although I'm good at improvising, I usually have to access the "useless trivia" part of my brain in order to keep the conversation lively. This results in my regurgitating things I've read, seen or heard elsewhere. This causes my speaking abilities to suffer, because I become too reliant on established texts and words to get my point across verbally.
It all boils down to possessing a wealth of word knowledge. Language is power-- don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
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Now...
As you may or may not know, I don't know how to speak Spanish.
I took Spanish in high school. I received a B for my efforts, and retained very little of what I learned.
My father speaks fluent Spanish AND English. Never in the three decades that I've been talking has the issue come up for him. Never. Not once. Amazing, isn't it? Not one drop of pressure from my father to learn Spanish. He didn't care. He wanted me to completely assimilate. He succeeded.
My father is not ashamed of his roots at all. Rather, he has the Old School Immigrant view of America: This is not Mexico, so learn the ways of this new country or else get pushed around.
My mother only speaks English. She is half-Japanese and half-Mexican. Certainly there has never any pressure from her on me to learn Spanish.
Even though my parents don't care about it, it has always puzzled me: Why haven't I learned to speak Spanish?
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I bring this up because I have been here for two years, at this job, working for a Spanish talk radio network, and my knowledge of espanol is just as bad as it was two years ago.
Two years, and I still haven't "assimilated".
A year ago, there was this girl I had a crush on who worked here. She barely spoke English. I flirted with her, she flirted with me. She gave me her phone number... and then she was fired.
I never saw her again. I still have the number. I don't call. Why?
Because I don't know Spanish.
She was beautiful. We got along well. But how can I communicate with her, especially on the phone?
If I were to call her at, say, two in the morning and leave a message on her VM, then I could write a script telling her to call me up so we can hang out. But maybe too much time has passed. Maybe she wouldn't even remember me.
The point is: my inability to learn Spanish may be metaphorical.
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Lately, my confidence has been in full swing. My approach to the people in my life has changed considerably, thanks to the fact that I've been back on my own two feet for at least a year now.
I am meeting new people and getting out more. This is good.
Today, while waiting for the elevator, a beautiful girl who works as an on-air personality talked with me. I know her, she knows me, and we chat often.
This girl, whom I will call "Vera", is half-Chinese and half-Mexican, so we have a lot in common. She is a big sports buff, and does a show with an all Spanish-speaking crew of guys who are always around her wherever she goes.
Since she is an on-air personality, it logically follows that she speaks Spanish. She is very fluent.
She knows I don't speak Spanish. Today, when I saw her, I said "Hello" and she answered me in Spanish. It was almost as if she dared me to answer her back in Spanish.
I couldn't. I answered (and continued the rest of my comments) in English.
We got into the elevator with the rest of her show crew. They were speaking in Spanish. They know English, but prefer Spanish.
I have never cared whether people who work with me like me or dislike me because of my language barrier. However, I wanted to communicate with her, and it was obvious that she was throwing down a gauntlet. She wanted me to meet her halfway, and I backed down.
When I walked out of the elevator, I got really shy and walked as fast as I could out of the lobby. And it sucks, because I like her and she likes me... and yet I feel like a little boy who is tongue-tied.
And that's when it hit me-- my inability to speak Spanish is a metaphor for my shyness around certain people, particularly women.
I like the feeling of having a command of the English language. I have always felt in control of most situations because of that confidence. Whenever I have skewered up the courage to talk to a woman, I relied on my silver tongue. It has usually helped me out, occasionally backfiring but seldom enough to make it all interesting.
Talking in Spanish, for me, is a weak point, and my confidence gets sapped. It is like a man who is so enamored of a woman that he doesn't know what to say.
I am never at a loss for words in my everyday life, so to come across this type of situation is a moment of linguistic impotence for me.
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I know that Vera must understand my plight, and I'm pretty sure that, as a racially mixed person herself, she has had difficulties with her identity over the years. Plus, being a female working in a male-dominated field such as sports, surrounded by the machismo of Latino sports fans such as her show crew, has toughened her up and made her who she is today.
Her challenge to me is one I should accept. Vera learned Spanish because her mother wouldn't talk to her in English. She refused to talk to her in English, even though she knew how to speak it.
By doing the same to me, she is not trying to distance herself from me. She is trying to help me improve my Spanish. And maybe I should do something about it, because there's no excuse for me to be working here and not knowing shit.
I said I'd learn it when I was lusting after that other girl who worked here, the one who eventually got fired. Then, I got switched to the graveyard shift and stopped trying to learn. When I got back on to the normal shift, she was long gone.
And I still have her number...
I should just swallow my pride and learn it, for fuck's sake. That way, I can answer the few people who work here, who think that just because I can't speak it means I can't understand it. I know what they say about me, behind my back. And if you ask me, it's no different than what my born again Christian co-workers at the other radio network used to say about me.
The only difference is, they only spoke English. Therefore, they had to do it behind my back. Over here, they say it right to my face, in another tongue.
Vera's not talking shit about me, though-- she's trying to get me on the same page as her.
I'll make the effort, and get clowned for my weak Spanish. So what, right? Big deal.
I'm also going to try and blog in Spanish. We'll see how that goes.
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