Love notes from Siel is a newsletter about love, writing, and the nomad life from me, Siel.
Dear friend —
Spanish sounds strange in Buenos Aires.
To be fair, every Spanish-speaking country adds its unique quirks to the language. In Peru sparkling water is called “agua con gas,” while in Mexico “agua mineral,” for example. Once, at a restaurant in Mexico City, the Peruvian friend I was having dinner with asked for “agua mineral sin gas.” The waiter was very, very confused —
But Argentina really takes things to another level. For one, the Spanish here has a decidedly Italian lilt, thanks to the huge wave of immigration from that European country about a century ago. Secondly, porteños (people from Buenos Aires) use different words for “you.” While most other countries say “tu,” here they say “vos” — a substitution that also totally changes up how verbs are conjugated and trips me up every time.
To make things worse, porteños add a “sh” sound in front of every “y” sound. “Calle” (road, pronounced like ka-yeh) is pronounced “ka-sheh” here — which honestly sounds like a totally different word that should mean something else.
And just to add extra confusion, many words are totally different altogether. Here, an avocado isn’t “aguacate” like in pretty much every other Spanish-speaking country, but rather, “palta.” Bus isn’t “autobus” but “colectivo.” Party isn’t “fiesta” but “joda.”
To put this another way: My Spanish acquisition has plateaued.
The thing is, I can get by in Spanish at this point. I think this is why it’s tough for people in general to get from a B2 (can communicate passably in most situations) to a C1 (can communicate with ease and nuance) level of a second language. Right now, I can get across what I’m trying to say and hold conversations — if rather slowly. But I’m also not truly fluent. I have to think a lot, I need people to slow down their speech, and even then I miss a lot because: slang, idioms, cultural references, nuance.
The sense that my Spanish is “stuck” got me feeling a little down. Last week I fell into an internet rabbit hole about how exactly one gets from a B2 to a C1 level. Online opinions were plentiful, ranging from the “just do your best” to “buy my online course” variety.
Then there were the tough love people. According to these sadists, if you really want to get to a C1 level, you can’t do stuff in Spanish for “fun” anymore. You can’t, say, rely on chatting casually about the weather with the cashier at the grocery store or watching movies you’ve already seen in English dubbed over in Spanish. Rather, you should be doing everything in “hard mode”: Everything you watch or read or listen to or write should be in Spanish — no more pulling out Google translate, no switching over to English for words you don’t know yet, no slowing down playback speeds. Plus, everything you don’t yet know, you should be actively drilling yourself on until you do.
My hope, while I’m in Buenos Aires these first months of 2024, is to get to a C1 level once and for all. To that end, I changed my Instagram and Candy Crush settings to Spanish — hehe. More seriously, I’ve started journaling and reading novels in Spanish. I’ve restarted Babbel Live and am working through the exercise books I got from my single week of Spanish classes in Barcelona last month.
I also started watching a mostly-in-Spanish Apple+ series called Now and Then — without English or Spanish subtitles!
Sadly, though I can follow the general plot, a lot of dialogue still flies by me. The other night I ended up resorting to reading episode recaps in English. Then I felt guilty —
Have you learned a language as an adult — with real fluency? Please share your tips and tricks —
Besitos —
Siel
Three links you might love:
Inflation in Argentina is skyrocketing — again. Remember how Argentina voted in a new President in November? “Since Mr. Milei took office on Dec. 10 and quickly devalued the Argentine currency, prices have soared at such a dizzying pace that many in this South American country of 46 million are running new calculations on how their businesses or households can survive the far deeper economic crunch the country is already enduring.”
The CIA has a creative writing group. “Surprisingly, none of the CIA writers were writing spy novels. They were working on short stories. Self-published dystopian sci-fi. A presidential biography. Upmarket fiction. A personal blog, which I was told to check out if I ever wanted a really good muffin recipe.”
Some book reviews are comically harsh. LitHub’s annual Most Scathing Book Reviews list rails against a lot of celeb memoirs. “Ms. Streisand is a woman of many talents. Curating memories of the way she was—well, that isn’t one of them”
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I would love to know how it goes with your Spanish acquisition. I've studied several languages more or less seriously over the years, but have probably never reached the B2 level, except maybe at the tail end of my time at the Middlebury German School . . . in the summer of 1997. I'm on an 800+-day streak of using Duolingo to learn Portuguese and brush up my German, so I think about this stuff a lot.