A frequently asked question that I get is, “Where are you from?”. I explain that I’m from Mississippi, but my family is Colombian. An instant follow-up question is usually “Can you speak Spanish?” or “How well do you speak Spanish?”.
The short answer is I can understand casual Latin-American Spanish pretty well. That being said, I would be pretty useless in translating for certain occupations like a lawyer or a mechanic because my daily Spanish doesn’t include any specialized vocabulary. I also have some issues understanding people with thick accents. My first language was Spanish, but I have no real-life experience speaking Spanish to anyone other than my family.
The initial disconnect in my Spanish speaking was when I went to preschool. I was taken aback that everyone else didn’t speak Spanish. Whenever someone learned I could speak Spanish, I would be pressured to “say something!”. I hated that so much because I would get nervous, fumble my words, and somehow forget the days of the week. For most of my childhood and academic career I tried not to bring up that I was bilingual or biracial, and that usually worked to my advantage for most of my life. I was never called on to be a translator, I never had to help my peers with their Spanish homework, and I never really had to deal with feeling different. My public school didn’t allow students to take language classes until they were in the eleventh grade, so my Spanish slowly deteriorated until I was 16. It was a shame I couldn’t write or read very well, but the difference it made in my life felt negligible.
It wasn’t until I moved into a more progressive magnet school that I felt more comfortable in my background and I started to think that I was missing out on something. Before I moved to this new school, I had never met people from a background outside of White Southern Baptists, Chinese Americans, Vietnamese Americans, African Americans, or Mexican. At this new school, my roommate was Native American, and some of my classmates were even first-generation immigrants from Russia, India, and Germany. It was crazy to think we were all from the same state that I viewed as fairly monolithic. It was a small school, so my classmates and I bonded well, and we took pride in each other’s identities. At this school there were cultural clubs, open events, and celebrations for a wide variety of holidays. At this school, I could finally expand my language skills by taking proper Spanish classes and feel comfortable in doing so. Over the next two years, I got more experience with Spanish grammar, spelling, a more extensive vocabulary, and even presentation and real-life communication skills.
While I took language classes, it felt like every night I would call my parents and say, “There’s no way this is true…”, or “How come I never knew this grammar convention?”, or “I had no idea there were levels of formality in conjugations!”. Learning the technical ins and outs of a language proved to be absolutely necessary because listening in on casual Spanish for years is not enough to claim fluency.
This proved to be frustrating sometimes. My Spanish teacher was actually Brazilian. This resulted in me catching small slip ups that he made, which, in turn, led to him figuring out that I understood a lot more Spanish than I let on. As a result, I was given special assignments and even a Spanish 3 textbook while my peers had a Spanish 1 textbook. I was annoyed for most of my 2 years with him because my work was significantly more involved than the class I was enrolled in, but my literacy undeniably improved. All of this back and forth resolved itself at the end of my senior year of high school when I was tested in both of my languages for a gold seal of biliteracy. Sure enough, at senior awards, I was one of two students at my high school that earned this seal of biliteracy. My hard work proved to be more valuable than previous knowledge as I tested above several native Spanish speakers. Now, I can say my Spanish is a good deal better, but my strength is still conversational Spanish.