So, so much.
I miss the ñ.
I miss the simple "hola, como estas?" exchange that worked no matter what time of day it was.
I miss knowing how to conjugate regular verbs: -o for yo, -as for tu, -amos for nosotros, and -an for ustedes.
I miss knowing that words that end in -ar, -er, and -ir are verbs; words that end in -o are masculine, -a indicates femininity.
I miss all the cognates (because, let's be honest, you really CAN get pretty far if you just take an English word, add an o or a to the end, and say it with an accent).
I miss looking at a menu and knowing what's in a particular dish based on the description. I had food vocabulary down.
And this one isn't a language thing, but I miss greeting everyone with kisses on the cheeks. It made the language barrier seem less insurmountable. After all, we just kissed. We're friends now.
And I know we lived in Paraguay for three years. Where we attended a Spanish speaking church and lived off-campus in a neighborhood with zero neighbors with any semblance of English fluency. We HAD to learn. And fast.
And I'm one of those kids that actually remembered lessons from high school Spanish class.
And thrice-annual trips to Ensenada, Mexico through college kept some words and phrases fresh.
And Brandon and I would watch Spanish soaps with Aunt Diana during our dating days.
And the curriculum in California always included a token "cultural" story with snippets of dialogue in Spanish to be decoded and translated for my 99% NOT Spanish speaking class.
All of this should be my reality check.
If I start counting from my high school days, I had 14-ish years of familiarity with Spanish including three years of full immersion while in Paraguay.
I heard my first Bahasa word about 14 WEEKS ago.
That should be comforting. A reminder that language acquisition will come. That it'll take time. That one day I'll recognize at least one word in a conversation that I overhear in an elevator.
But it doesn't.
Every time I walk into the grocery store and still have to shop by sight (and sometimes smell) because I cannot decode the text on the boxes and shelves, I just miss Stock.
When I say good morning to a guard or worker, when the position of the sun clearly indicates that it's NOT morning, but I don't remember if it's time for the early afternoon greeting or the late afternoon one. I panic and use one of the few words I know. Pagi! (did I even spell that right?)
Ugh! Can I get an "hola," anyone?
Even when I see Bahasa Indonesia words in print and try to apply some hooked on phonics decoding skills, I fall short. Because each word is a million syllables long (okay, seven), and when it's pronounced, there are silent letters, skipped syllables, and sounds that are vocalized, but weren't on the paper. Okay, probably not, but it just sounds like mush to my untrained ear.
*sigh*
I mean no disrespect.
And I know that the above is a gross misrepresentation of Bahasa.
But this is where I am right now:
I know how to count to two, and the number five. Sometimes I can remember the number three IF I'm counting up from one. By itself? Never. And four? Don't even think about it.
I can say left, right, straight, and here to a taxi driver.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Good morning and good evening. Maybe not at the right time of day, but I'm grasping at vocabulary straws here.
I know the word for run starts with the letter "L". (And I'm proud of that?)
The rest? It all just seems like a mouthful of cotton when I attempt to go beyond my bakers-dozen of familiar words. And it sound like chaos to my untrained ear whenever I hear conversations going on around me. I don't even know where to begin to unravel that mess.
So, I'll continue to practice my Spanish in the silent recesses of my mind. Continue to listen to worship in Espanol and smile when Bailey shouts "la luna!" at the moon.
I miss you, Spanish.
So much it hurts sometimes.
