Overseas Briefing

VALPARAÍSO — Since I first started studying Spanish I’ve had this passion for it. Spanish is fluid, Spanish is round; in my mouth Spanish curls loosely yet precisely, blossoming like loops drawn in India ink. I’m a synesthete, so for me words are colors, and Spanish is rich, vivid; Spanish is bright reds and oranges and yellows, a basket of heirloom tomatoes.

I came to Chile to study Spanish. Or rather, the line of thinking that led to my being currently in Chile began with a vague but wholehearted resolve to study Spanish. I think I’m realizing more and more that things are never quite how we expect them to be. I filled out some applications my sophomore spring, I bought a plane ticket, and now I’m living with a Chilean family, taking classes at a Chilean university, working for a Chilean governmental program and I’m studying Spanish, all right.  I’m breathing Spanish, thinking Spanish, dreaming Spanish, eating Spanish. I don’t even speak English with the gringos.

And I’m frustrated. Words are who I am. When I signed up to study abroad in Chile, I didn’t, and couldn’t, understand what it would mean — that I was signing up to experience the sensation of being unable to express myself fully, of failing over and over again to match intention with verbalization, of constantly missing the nuances of everyday life that we use language to capture. My Spanish is very good but language is culture — I wasn’t born in Chile, I wasn’t raised here and a semester here will get me close to fluency but nowhere near the ineffable ease that characterizes my relationship with English.

In Spanish, I can be pleasant, friendly, agreeable. I can be silly, fun and occasionally witty.  But I can’t fully be myself in Spanish, at least not yet, though I doubt I will ever use Spanish to most articulately and precisely represent my ideas, opinions, emotions and other elements that make me who I am. Every word we speak contains innumerable layers of meaning inscribed upon innumerable more layers of experience and understanding.  Here, when I want to say that I like someone, I can’t; I can say that they are una buena onda, nice or agreeable, or I can say that me llevo bien with them, that I get along well with them. Both phrases approach what I want to say but neither embodies the idea satisfactorily enough to make me feel completely assured that I have expressed what I wanted to express.  The frustration and uncertainty lie in the nuances.

A few days ago my host brother told me that my voice sounds more relaxed when I speak English. Perhaps that’s what I miss the most: the relaxation that comes with knowing that I can explain myself in precisely the manner that I want, that the words will never feel exotic or alien. In English, every word I use comes with a history of experience and familiarity. With Spanish, I have to rely more on the definitions that I have studied or have been told.

I still love Spanish. But I’m learning something that has only fully revealed itself to me here, in a non-English speaking country: language is complicated and frustrating, and as often as it approaches the truth, it also withdraws, leaving speaker or listener dissatisfied. My romance with Spanish at the moment is fitful. Words are slippery.