Mi Lengua

The Beauty of the Spoken Word

With all my traveling, I have grown accustomed to picking up languages fairly quickly. Actually, it is one of my favourite things about travel. The people and culture rank first, languages second, and sights comes in a tight third. There is something so amazing about gathering stories and having genuine conversations with people in a land other than your own. It is like a warehouse full of new ideas and gems waiting to be discovered and discussed. All this became attainable with every new word that I learned in another language.

I do have to say of all the languages, Spanish keeps coming in first. I am obviously a native-born English speaker, but I have also experienced Italian and French. I lived in Central America for almost eight months, and I could not get enough of the Spanish language. Everywhere my friends and I went, I would always get way too excited to speak the languages to the locals.

I remember one time, I walked down to the Poperia (small, family-run shop) just to have a conversation with Don Juan (The owner). His whole family worked with him in the shop, so I would never know which one I would speak with on a certain day. Sometimes I went even when I had nothing to purchase. I would awkwardly mumble something about churros (bag of chips), and then go into the whole spill of “How are your kids, how is your day going?”

This would then lead into an attempt of me using every word I possessed in the Spanish vocabulary. It was a lot of laughing and repeating until one of us finally came to a point. I remember the people of Honduras as some of the warmest, down-to-earth people that I have ever encountered; and every time that I communicated with Juan he was SO patient and friendly. That is probably a main reason that I was able to learn so much Spanish within my eight months in Central America.

I will never forget my adventures there, and the way I learned to speak the Spanish language. It always had such a smooth and beautiful sound that seemed to just roll of their lips. It truly felt effortless, and I was so grateful to have had the opportunity to be immersed in it. Even now when I see an opportunity to speak and remember it, I jump at the chance. So to the next Spanish speaker I meet on my airplane ride, “Hola! Como estas?”