Keagan’s World

I came to the realization I haven’t spoken much about the progress I’ve seen behind the whole premise of me coming to Argentina in the first place: to learn Spanish. Or really, it’s Castellano here (with a “sh” sound on the “ll” instead of “y”).

That’s right, I’m taking on the Argentine accent and there’s nothin y’all can do to stop me.

My favorite phrase to mess with people who aren’t familiar with Castellano Spanish is “yo ya fui ayer allá”. For non-castellano Spanish speakers this phrase is pronounced “yo yah f-wee eye-air eye-yah”

In Castellano: “show shah f-wee ah-share ah-shah”

The best part is it’s not even an uncommon thing to say – it translates to “I already went there yesterday”.

Brutal I know.

Anyways, pretty sure my last update was about me getting thrown into the deep end day one and feeling immediately overwhelmed. 2 months later? Well, I just held a 3 hour conversation with a group of 5 native Spanish speakers at a tango bar just a couple weeks ago. Crazy right? If you would’ve told me I’d be doing that by 1.5 months in on day one I woulda laughed at you. But here we are.

So how did it happen? I mean I could feed you some BS about how I studied super hard and spent hours grinding flash cards and grammar homework, but the fact is I really only saw process when I took my head out of the book and just said… you guessed it:

“Ah screw it”

First I said “ah screw it” to making sure I was speaking perfect grammar. Then with verb forms. Then with perfect understanding. Then with perfect vocab.

So now it sounds like I’m speaking jibberish I know, but I’m not – let me explain it.

I came to this realization that what was keeping me from being a functional Spanish speaker was not my lack of knowledge but my lack of confidence. After each step of saying “ah screw it” to over-analyzing whether I was saying the perfect thing, I found that people still understood me without problem. And with each step, I found myself speaking more and more fluently.

Now I’m not saying I’m perfect in every aspect. I absolutely have sacrificed perfection for fluency… but I did so intentionally.

Speaking rather fluent broken Spanish has been far better for conversation than slow, perfect Spanish.

Why?

People understand you better.

Now this may seem backwards, but it’s actually quite sensical. If it takes you 5x the time to say a sentence from normal speed with long pauses on some complex irregular past subjunctive verb, by the time you finish your thought, odds are they forgot where you started and the context is lost (#tiktokera). Now if you’re speaking at just half the speed of normal, not pausing on words, and getting 80-90% of what you’re saying right, you’re gonna be so much easier to understand.

Conversations flow better.

Somewhat of spillover from the last topic: greater understanding + more bearable conversation speed = longer, more diverse conversations. You can sit down in a park or bar and banter with people for a couple hours with ease.

You learn vocab quicker.

As you spend more time speaking Spanish, you start to notice patterns with how to change different parts of speech relating to the same topic to switch it (ie: noun to verb). Likewise, general suffix rules. Do they work the same 100% of the time?

Nope.

But over 95% of the time you’re gonna get close enough in the ballpark that the person can correct you. If they don’t correct you, it’s easy to just ask if that’s the correct way to say it.

And just like that you know a new word.

Huge breaking news for ya: when you make mistakes, you learn more.

I know. Earth shattering. Never heard that before.

Getting over fear of failure is so hard. We’ve been hard-wired since grade school to feel like failing is the end of the world but it’s just not. Fail early, fail often, fail before it really matters.

Fail with the purpose of learning from it.

You do that, and you’re gonna run laps around the guy/girl next you that spent their lives in the comfort zone.

Hell man I’m still failing at Spanish. I still struggle to comprehend full native speaking fluency particularly in the Argentine accent. I still say things at a coffee shop when the employee will give a confused look and end up switching to English. I still occasionally have to employ the nod, laugh, and pray strat when I understand nothing of what was said to me after 3 tries.

I’m failing everyday. But I’m also getting better everyday.