Language Gap

(Written around March 3)

folkloric dancers, welcome program for international students

One thing that struck me from the beginning, even before my fascination with windows is the idea of communicating in Spanish, my second language, with someone who it in the same boat, someone who also speaks Spanish as a second language, but who does not share English as their first language.

When you start learning Spanish as a child, you learn the 20 countries and capitols of the countries that have Spanish as their national language.  You start dreaming; maybe my Spanish will take me to Tegucigalpa.  No, maybe I’ll go to Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, or Ecuador, maybe even Chile.  Next, you learn vocabulary to talk about an experience in a market, buying wool sweaters on the slopes of Macchu Picchu.  You learn to say Chichicastenango and pledge to go there just to say the word, never you mind, the locals just call it ChiChi or something like that.  Never, however do you think about the other children starting Spanish in other parts of the world who might be thinking the exact same thing.

I do remember thinking, unfairly, what if I saw an Asian person speaking Spanish, or what about an African person who had learned Chinese or Japanese… I imagine thinking how strange that would be.  Isn’t it just as strange for me to be speaking Spanish?  Sure, It’s the language of my neighbor country, heck it’s almost the language of my neighbor county, but it’s not my language.  It’s not the language of my ancestors (German, Irish, English), but it’s hardly different than someone from Asia learning the language of their neighbors on the other side of the Pacific….

What’s been EVEN cooler to me this week (international orientation week), though, and even my first day has been to talk to other students from Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Mexico, and other countries that I have only read about by speaking Spanish.  Everyone here has had to work at learning Spanish.  Our orientation program, like our classes was purely in Spanish as that was the best guess at the language that all of us would understand probably equally.  

Dancing with one of the Folk-dancers during our orientation welcome program

Even out of the Chileans that are already here, there are differences in languages taught in the schools.  There are British Schools, Arabic Schools, Argentinean Schools, and many more.  Even passing shops here that sell Arabic food like shwarma have really helped to put me in my place as just another foreigner.  It’s not really that special to come from the United States. In Latin America, it’s almost less special because of some of out poor choices in foreign policy, but that’s another blog…  

The history of the world, like humanity is flawed and we’re all just trying to find our place.  It was really cool, though to talk to a German boy, who knows the city in Germany where my mother was born, but to talk about it in Spanish.  More windows than I could possibly imagine have been opened through Spanish!

Click to see more pictures of orientation