Nearly everyone I talk to back home says I’ll “pick up Spanish,” as if the new language is like an empanada from down the street or a pencil dropped on the floor. Spanish speakers tell me this. Non-Spanish speakers tell me this. They say it to be reassuring, as I’m pretty straightforward about the “muy mal” nature of my foreign language abilities.

I see the signs everywhere.

A quick recap… See, I took Latin in high school. I love that if nothing else, I can say “I took Latin in high school,” and all four years mind you. It helped with my SATs and yes, some part of me probably did want to be a doctor though I knew I didn’t have what it took to brave the world of medicine. Last night we were watching Iron Man 2, and there’s a scene where Scarlett Johansson’s character spouts off something witty and sarcastic in Latin to Robert Downey, Jr. I can’t do that. But I can say “Graecia in Europa est.” Or, “Greece is in Europe,” as I’m sure you can “pick up.” It’s the very first sentence I ever learned as a freshman, and it’s the one that’s stuck. Even after eventually translating Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Virgil’s Aeneid.

In college, I switched things up and took two years of Italian. I’m Italian. I wanted to study abroad in Italy. Case closed. Well, I ended up going abroad to London, so even though I vaguely remember an Italian final sophomore year where I, gasp, carried on a conversation for an entire ten minutes, I can still only recognize it in print sometimes. That is, as I’ve said, until I moved to Chile, where suddenly long-lost Italian vocabulary finds its way out my mouth whenever I try to speak Spanish. Usually it amounts to an incomprehensible Italian/Spanish hybrid. I did so just this week when asking the price of the aforementioned empanadas by saying “Quanto cuesta?” Direct translation: “How much” (in Italian) + “slope” (Spanish) + interrogative intonation (also universal for “confused”). Oh dear. And, yes, the pronunciation and the grammatical aspects of Spanish and Italian are very similar, so that at least helps. If I can just forget my Italian vocab and swap in Spanish! I have such respect for the folks who acquire not just one, but multiple languages. Where do all those vocabularies go?!

Snapped in Mendoza, Argentina.

Last semester in TESOL, we learned that the best time for language acquisition is 0-8 months, or at least anytime before puberty hits, which is right about when most foreign language programs get going in U.S. school systems (if you’re lucky). Age 13 or so is when all of our hibitions and anxieties also start to kick in, after all, so it’s pretty much the worst time to put yourself out on a ridiculous limb, as is often required when conversing in a non-native tongue.

Either way, I missed the boat with Spanish. I have gotten a lot of the “Oh, you’re from California? You must know Spanish.” Yeah… To that I just say I did take it at my public middle school. Case in point, all I really remember from those years are two most excellent songs, one for the days of the week and another for counting to twenty. I could sing them right now, but I’ll spare you. They are, however, so engrained in my brain that I sometimes have to sing along in my head to sixteen, say, before I can speak the right number aloud. I know, it’s a gift.

Truly. Punta de Lobos, Chile

I also know I’ve only been here three months. In that time, I’ve managed to physically move to Chile, get down to the business of blogging, get TEFL certified, get a job, officially finish the first draft of my novel, and make some awesome new friends. Ryan and I even fit in a quick trip to Mendoza. All good, fortunate, productive stuff that’s given me a lot to write about. Except for the thing about not really learning much Spanish. I did take a week’s worth of lessons before my TEFL course started. I placed in “high beginner,” so I ended up with a course book that was far beyond my actual level, and my lovely, kind, patient teacher didn’t realize until Friday that I should have started at the very beginning. As an English teacher, I now know that “high beginners” can also be known as “false beginners.” In other words, for whatever reason, they have been exposed to and have absorbed enough of the target language to recognize correct answers, but not to really know the reasoning behind them (or the meaning of the rest of the sentence they appear in for that matter). In other words, they guessed well on a placement test and now it’s up to the teacher to re-align the coursework with their skill set.

So, I’m a false beginner. And depending on how much I “pick up,” one of my biggest fears is that I’ll be The Girl Who Move to Chile and Didn’t Learn Spanish. Let’s hope not. Take lessons, you say? Have a weekly coffee with a Spanish speaker looking to improve his/her English? Fine ideas. The only problem is Spanish classes actually cost more per hour than what I make as a beginning English teacher, so it’s hard for me to justify that at this point. Secondly, I think this would be an unfair coffee talk given my “muy mal” skill level. To find someone at a comparable level would probably equate to a lot of mutual nodding and/or confused stares out the window next to us.

Some more Español.

In the meantime, I’ll pick it up. (I’m holding everyone to that promise!) I’ll pay attention. I’ll keep reaching for the Spanish dictionary on our bookshelf. I will study more. But it’s so amazing to be in a place and at an age where I’ve finally cracked the code and have found a way to write everyday or close to it. With lesson prep and family life and all the rest, I keep procrastinating that “Spanish for Dummies” textbook (no joke and it’s not all that bad) under said dictionary. But I’m finally not procrastinating the writing (in English) and, feeling a little victorious about that, I might still procrastinate the Spanish. Just for a little while longer. And don’t worry. I can get by. Just don’t ask me any follow-up questions. At least not yet. Plus, it makes me feel a bit better that many of the semi-permanent expats I’ve asked have said it took three years to really feel like they could communicate freely, nail Chile’s notorious slang, and keep up with the conversational speed of multiple speakers. Not three months in other words.