Spanish plateau

I leave the DR in un mes, exactly. one month. And while my Spanish has definitely benefited from me being here, I don’t feel as if it has been improving as much as it could be. I’ve been perfecting the stuff that I already knew- mostly working to speak with less breaks or UHHHHHs, and also trying to get a really good hold on the godforsaken subjunctive. However, my vocabulary has barely grown at all. Most of this is due to the fact that I speak a lot of English. Why? Well, despite being surrounded by Spanish-speakers all the time, and living with Spanish-speakers… I also spend a lot of my time with gringos.


First Google image for 'Spanish lanuage' + first Google image for 'Plateau' = Spanish plateau

It’s just so easy though, to speak English. There’s always an excuse- you need to say something fast, you need to say something quietly, you’re stressed, you don’t know the exact word in Spanish so you just go around it, you’re talking about people around you and you don’t want them to understand (usually this is only true when there are people hardcore creeping on us) or you’re just lazy and don’t feel like it. I’ve been totally guilty of all of these.

Sin embargo, I need to stop making excuses and start actually speaking Spanish. I’m not going to have these opportunities in the States. Yeah, I have a few Spanish-speaking friends and I know that my school has a pretty active Spanish Club… but there’s really, really no comparison to actually being in the country.

One of the guys in my group made a promise to his Spanish advisor two weeks ago that he was going to stop speaking English. Since then, he’s been speaking about 98% Spanish. Props to him, really… but isn’t this what we were supposed to have been doing all along? We all started off being all YES SPANISH but that has obviously faltered in these past few months. I was talking about this with my friend Erin the other day, and we decided that we were both going to do the same. So I have been.

Okay, okay… I have been trying. Por lo menos. IT’S SOMETHING.

My friend who hasn’t been speaking English, he told me that he feels has if he’s improved so much in these past weeks, and that he really does notice a difference. If he notices such a difference after two weeks, what can I do with a month? Granted, I should’ve been doing this all along… but whatever. I still have a month.

Anyway. When I was in nyc last month I bought a book called Dirty Spanish. It’s not “dirty” Spanish as in inappropriate Spanish (well… not entirely), but instead slang, regional words, and words in pop culture. I went through and made a list of words that I thought would come in handy, showed the list to a Dominican… and she proceeded to cross out about half of them. No se dice aquí. They don’t say those things here.

That’s the thing about Spanish. There are so many native-Spanish speaking countries. And some of them are pretty freaking big. Chile is like a million miles long. And both Mexico and Argentina are pretty fat. So in addition to country-specific words, you’ve got region/city-specific words… even the DR- which is pretty pequeñito, in comparison to many other Spanish-speaking countries- has words that are used in Santiago and not in the capital, and vise versa.

Anyway, here’s a list of some new words/expressions that my new book has taught me that are actually used here:

Estar en la luna- To not be paying attention, to be a space cadet

Todo el asunto está seriamente jodido- This whole situation is seriously screwed up.

¡Tranquilizate!- Calm down! (lit. “Tranquilize yourself”)

Un tipo cualquiera- Some random dude

Cursi- Tacky

Lio- Chaos

¡Lárgate!- Get out of here!

Preñada- Preggers/preggo

Valer la pena- To be worth it

FYI. Okay, back to Spanish now… I should write a blog totally en español just to throw you all off...