Learning Spanish in Japan

For no particular reason, I’ve started taking Spanish classes on Saturday mornings.

I couldn’t care less about learning Spanish. I’m sure it would be useful to know and everything, but at the moment I’m interested in learning Japanese, Korean, and French, and you have to draw the line somewhere.

So, at best these Spanish classes are a waste of time, and at worst, I’m worried it might even confuse me with my studies in the other 3 languages.

But I’m taking the classes because the teacher, Jorge, is a friend of mine, it gets my ass out of bed on Saturday mornings, and there are a lot of cute Japanese girls also taking the class.

I never took any Spanish courses in high school or college (I opted for Latin instead). The extent of my previous Spanish study was Spanish club, which I was a member of during 7th and 8th grade. And a couple after school classes I remember taking as an elementary student. And of course the Spanish language segments of “Sesame Street”, which I watched as a youngster. And the kind of broken Hollywood Spanish I learned from watching re-runs of Zorro, Speedy Gonzales, and other pop culture figures. Actually, when you add it all up, I probably know a lot more Spanish than I realize.

It’s all point of comparison. I don’t know any more Spanish than the average American, probably less actually. I know daily greetings, which were burned into my head by saying them every morning in Spanish club.
(“Hola, Como estas? Mui Buen, Gracias. Et tu? Mui Buen, Gracias.”)

I know how to count to ten in Spanish (just like everyone else). And then various other words that have become part of our popular culture. (Amigo, Gracias, Si Senor Zorro, Vamos, siesta, gringo, et cetera.)

And that’s about it. Pretty pathetic really. I’d never go around back home claiming that I knew any Spanish.

But in Japan, most Japanese people don’t know a single word of Spanish at all. In fact many of them don’t even know what a taco is, and often think Mexico is an English speaking country.

Foreign language education is English only. To the Japanese minds, there are only two languages in the world: English and Japanese. Therefore simple things like being able to count to ten in Spanish, or knowing simple Spanish greetings, make me all of a sudden appear international and cultured.

My first time abroad was when I went with my family to Korea when I was 19. That was my first time in a country where I didn’t speak the language. As I think is normal in those circumstances, after a week I began to fantasize about speaking fluent Korean. But the odd thing was even in my fantasies I wasn’t speaking anything that sounded vaguely like Korean. I kept speaking Spanish.

I didn’t know a lot of Spanish, but what little I knew kept popping up in my fantasies. I’d imagine myself walking into the hotel and speaking fluent Korean with the hotel staff, but Spanish words and Spanish greetings kept popping into my head instead.

Since I was studying Latin at the time, I suppose it is odd that Spanish was popping into my head instead of Latin. But Latin was always taught as a language of text, not as a living, speaking language. When I pictured a foreign language in my head, I pictured Spanish.

Halfway through my first year in Japan, I began to notice the reverse had happened. I couldn’t count to 10 in Spanish without switching into Japanese.

“Uno, duos, tres, shi, go, roku…wait a minute, that’s Japanese. Uno, duos, tres, quarto, go, roku…damn it!”

Even though there was absolutely no reason why I needed to count to 10 in Spanish, I suddenly found myself incredibly frustrated. I had been able to count to 10 I Spanish ever since I was 5 years old and learned it off of “Sesame Street”. Now I had the feeling of it being just on the tip of my tongue, but unable to recall. It’s like the feeling you have when you have a song in your head, and you can’t remember where you heard it from, and you suddenly find yourself paralyzed and unable to do anything else until you figure out where that song came from…. It was kind of like that. After a while I remembered what the rest of the numbers were, and then I was able to go about the rest of my day.

Occasionally I discover the same thing with Latin. In high school I had to memorize “The Lord’s Prayer” in Latin, but when I try and recall it now, I get about halfway through before it becomes all Japanese.

So maybe it’s just as well that I’m taking Spanish classes. There are a lot of Peruvians in this area, so I do met Spanish speakers from time to time. I always try and greet them with, “Hola, Como Estas?” Unfortunately they never respond the way their supposed to. I always wait to hear “Mui Buen, et tu?” in vain. Instead I get some other words that don’t make any sense to me, and I never have an opportunity to finish off with “Mui Buen, Gracias.”

Link of the Day
Jeff Smith, one of my old comrades from Media Mouse, and a local media critic, has written this article reflecting on his experience monitoring the local media in West Michigan. Of course it's always good to be critical of media, so Jeff's article is well worth taking a look at.