Two musings of my Spanish learning that convinced me that language learning as an adult is different.

Act 1

I was lying flat on the car seats and sleeping. Motion sickness woke me up. The high altitude curvy roads were just too much for me. I sat straight. I remember the advice for these situations, “focus directly on the road in front of the car”. I read a few notices on the street, “S-e v-e-n-d-e”, “T-i-e-n-d-a”, what? I can read letters but it is complete gibberish. What language is it? I had no clue. I kept staring out of the front window to cut down on the nausea.

A few minutes later, I see another “Se vende”. “Lots of shops to rent here”, I said to myself. “Tienda”, that’s a small store, I recalled. These are some basic phrases and anyone spending any time in Latin America gets acquainted with them. So, why wasn’t I able to decipher them immediately after I woke up?

The only clue I have is that for a newly acquired language, there is some concerted effort required on the part of brain to read it. And that effort is a bit too much to expect during the booting up phase.

Act 2

Its only when we met our guide that we realized that he doesn’t speak English. It turns out, I was the only person in the group who had some ability to speak Spanish. So, I became the translator! It is doable, especially, if you are only translating from a limited vocabulary of hiking. We reached the camp around 2 PM, I was breathless due to high altitude and decided to sleep.

Around 5 PM, the guide shined the light on my tent. That’s a very standard global signal to initiate a conversation. He said something, the only thing I could decipher was “Sir” followed by gibberish. He repeated, again, I couldn’t decipher anything. I brute forced. He isn’t speaking English. He isn’t speaking Hindi. He isn’t speaking Punjabi. I recalled that we have been chatting earlier in the day. But now, I couldn’t even guess what language he was speaking in!

Few minutes later, he shouted again, “Señor, tiempo … cena … venga”. “Un momento por favor, voy a venir pronto”, I replied. Just like earlier in the day, it wasn’t effortless to speak these phrases, but it was doable. During the dinner, I translated the plan for tomorrow to English for other participants. Somehow Spanish add-on had activated by then.