I'm finally taking a Spanish class. I never took a language in high school. I took two semesters of Italian during my first round of college, but I couldn't hold a conversation in that language. Ironic, since I have Italian words tattooed on my back. But, I digress. Spanish class. For almost a decade now I have told myself that I need to learn Spanish. I have worked with several Hispanic people and have always asked them to teach me a little bit. This has helped me a little. As in, I can speak extremely broken Spanglish if I'm absolutely pressed to to so. But asking a co-worker to "check la basura, por favor," is hardly what I'd call conversational. I also know that learning Spanish will help me to communicate with more customers. When I was a banker, it was always easier to say, "un momento, por favor," to the customer, and then, "Espanol, por favor!!!" to one of my coworkers when trying to explain the reason for an overdrawn account and the accompanying charges. At least I'm really good at saying "please."
Bright and early this morning I read the Spanish prompts my teacher wrote on the board for us to introduce ourselves. I read the prompts from the board, telling my name, where I'm from, my hobbies and my major. Luckily I can pronounce the words I see written. I wouldn't call it reading. But thanks to my foreign diction for singers class I took ten years ago, I can look at the language, and at least know how to pronounce the stuff. Of course, I finished the sentences in English. I mean, how do you say "karaoke" in Spanish? At any rate, I'm excited to learn a language that is so prevelant and useful these days. I feel that, as Americans, the importance of learning another language just isn't engrained in us. We expect everyone else to learn English. There was a time I had a customer at the bank who complained to me that two Hispanic tellers spoke to each other in "their language" and I shouldn't allow it. He said something along the lines of, "it makes them seem less intelligent." This got my blood boiling! I asked the customer what, if any, other languages he spoke, and he replied that he speaks the best lanuguage only: English. With a smile on my face, I told him that my tellers were quite intelligent because, in fact, they speak two languages to his one, and if the issue is that he actually feels intimidated by the fact that he only speaks one language, I'd be happy to let my tellers know to only speak English around him so he didn't feel left out. He shut up after that.
So the adventure begins for me. The world of bilingualism. I hope. Fortunately, there are many people around me who can help me practice, as well. My coworkers, some friends, and even one of my brothers. Now I just need to go buy my text book, entitled "Vistas." Or as my teacher would say, "Beestas."
