It’s no great shocker for me to admit that I am fluent in Spanish. I don’t know quite when that jump was made – from really really good to fluent. Certainly sometime in the last 2 years that I’ve been living and working in Madrid. Sure, there are still words that I don’t know or grammar tenses that trip me up. But for all intents and purposes fluency is now mine. (After all, those who can claim to know every word in their native language are few and far between… and almost certainly lying.) This can be evidenced by two most recent vocabulary acquisitions – engedro (when used for definition b), locayo, and esbirro. But although I know that I’m fluent it’s not something that I ever think about unless I’m working on my resume.
Then I was talking to my friend yesterday about a recent trip to the pharmacy. I stopped by on Monday to ask the pharmacist about a potential complication that I’d read on the prospectus of one of the medicines I’d bought last week. I just wanted to see how prevalent the complication was, what he recommended, etc. As I was relating this story to my friend she interrupted me and said, “ Did you ever think you’d have to have that kind of conversation in another language? It’s not exactly the type of vocabulary they teach you in school.” And I realized she was right. Somewhere along the way the leap was made from opening a bank account, buying groceries, heck even debating American foreign politics to discussing the finer points of illness, medicinal interactions and long-term health. If I had tried to plan that conversation, my query, ahead of time I probably would have chickened out and made Nacho do it for me. But this was just another stop in my long list of Monday afternoon errands. And it went off without a hitch.
Then I was talking to my friend yesterday about a recent trip to the pharmacy. I stopped by on Monday to ask the pharmacist about a potential complication that I’d read on the prospectus of one of the medicines I’d bought last week. I just wanted to see how prevalent the complication was, what he recommended, etc. As I was relating this story to my friend she interrupted me and said, “ Did you ever think you’d have to have that kind of conversation in another language? It’s not exactly the type of vocabulary they teach you in school.” And I realized she was right. Somewhere along the way the leap was made from opening a bank account, buying groceries, heck even debating American foreign politics to discussing the finer points of illness, medicinal interactions and long-term health. If I had tried to plan that conversation, my query, ahead of time I probably would have chickened out and made Nacho do it for me. But this was just another stop in my long list of Monday afternoon errands. And it went off without a hitch.
1 comment:
Bravo, mi hija!
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