I’ve been trying to teach myself Spanish for two or three years now. I’ve eviscerated the Duolingo app, am scything my way through Memrise, listen to some podcasts in Spanish with varying degrees of success, and eavesdrop on my kids’ Peruvian Spanish teacher every chance I get. I can read and write okay, like probably elementary school level. El Principito and I are super tight.

I’m honestly terrified to try and talk to native speakers, though. I kinda-sorta understand what they’re saying, but my brain doesn’t process fast enough to participate in conversation. One of my best friends married a woman from Monterrey, and she has lots of Spanish-speaking friends. She wants me to learn more, and invited me to a Halloween party last year where my wife and I were two of maybe five people there who didn’t speak Spanish. I was anxious as hell. Everyone was nice to me, of course, but there was no way I could keep up with the rapid-fire conversations everyone was having. I could pick up bits and pieces of conversations, but sure as hell couldn’t participate. It was kind of discouraging, even though that was the opposite of the point.

And that’s just Latin American Spanish. In Spain, there’s a whole other verb tense, second person plural, and they pronounce certain letters differently, but not all the time. For example, in most of the Western Hemisphere, ‘siento’ and ‘ciento’ sound exactly the same, but are used in totally different contexts. ‘Siento’ means “I feel” and “ciento” means “one hundred,” though most of the time people just say “cien.” In Spain, though, they pronounce ‘ciento’ “thjento”. Languages are weird.

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