After more than half a year of living in Peru and wondering for just as long what it would be like to try to speak only in Spanish for an entire day, I finally found out.
I had thought of this as my own personal pursuit, but early on was reminded that other people who had no vote in the matter would be asked to go along with Spanish-only. As we were hurrying to pack lunches for school my daughters told me that this was a fine goal and that they would like to join me in this undertaking but that this particular day was not an especially good day for speaking only in Spanish and that they would like if I could wait for a better time, maybe in the next week. “No puedo,” I said.
After they left for school, I went out with Oswaldo, a Peruvian friend and one of our language profs, for a late breakfast at an outdoor cafe. Though he also speaks English, he was happy to keep the conversation in Spanish, all the way through a tamale (his) and a piece of lemon pie (mine). And Celia, the country coordinator of the SST program here, was ever so patient as we conducted business that day only in Spanish. People who listened in on our conversations might have thought that I was extremely thoughtful, prone to long pauses between sentences, and even words (Maybe . . . we . . . should . . . move . . . the . . . history . . . lecture . . . to . . . Monday . . . instead).
One of the more awkward moments of the day came when I visited our daughters’ school, the International Christian School of Lima, to return their report card folders. I arrived expecting to find the secretary who is bilingual, but she was not in the front office that day. Instead, the principal was minding the desk. As he approached, I remembered that he had told us during our first meeting earlier in the year that he had been so busy managing the affairs of the school that he had not learned much Spanish. Oh, no. “How are you?” he asked. “Muy bien,” I told him. I tried my best to explain to him — in Spanish — about the personal language contract in place for the day. “That’s just fine,” he said, not switching to Spanish but clearly understanding my predicament. So we talked about which of the papers I needed to sign and return, he in English, me in Spanish. I felt a little foolish but held fast to the pledge. As I was leaving, I saw the vice principal, and we exchanged greetings. “Hello.” “Hola. Que tal?”
Of the many elements that go into successfully learning a language, one that rises near the top is that elusive sense of confidence. When the waiter approaches, do you think you can find the right verb and manage the correct conjugation? Do you feel like a Spanish speaker when you are about to call a hostel to make a reservation? And this sense of being up to the challenge can rise and fall by the day, if not the hour.
Spanish texts, even the best of them, make the whole process sound too easy, at least in my experience. The authors of 501 Spanish Verbs, an excellent book to be sure, are overly hopeful: “You will master Spanish verb forms if you study this book for a few minutes every day.” And speaking of the indexes found in the book, they write, “If you refer to these back pages each time you look up verb tense forms for a particular verb, you will increase your knowledge of Spanish vocabulary and Spanish idioms by leaps and bounds.” That may be, but it’s one thing to know that haya hablado means “I may have spoken” and that hubiera hablado means “I might have spoken,” and another thing altogether to gracefully insert the correct phrase while you’re crossing the street with a friend.
Maybe the most beneficial part of the Spanish-only day was moving inside a zone where words were more within reach than usual. Even though my vocabulary and conjugational control hadn’t improved appreciably, I felt less tentative in conversations than I had only the day before. When a money transfer failed to go through, walking into the bank to make inquiries seemed a little less daunting.
I had a few slips during the day, but my closest colleagues (Karen, Kate and Emily) always reminded me when I started out a sentence in English. By evening, I was getting pretty tired. Karen said I kept falling back on the same phrases, like “Algo mas?” (Anything else?). She’d ask me a question, I’d answer with a yes or a no, and then “Algo mas?”
“Algo mas?” “Algo mas?” “Algo mas?” “No mas!”
