Spanglish

I was a voracious reader when I was a kid.  I was friends with Mrs. Neff, the elementary school librarian and was always pestering her for recommendations.  I devoured all of E. B. White, Roald Dahl, heavy Brian Jaques books, and just about anything with adventure or animals.  I think I almost always won the accelerated reader contests in school.  Not because I wanted to win, it was a by-product of loving to read.  


I´ve been reading less as I´ve gotten older and my life more cluttered.  Especially in grad school when I was doing hours of reading every day for class and research.  I´ve picked it up again in the Peace Corps and have gone through a handful of books already.  I´ve found myself drawn to more fantasy or escapist books.  I loved re-reading the Hobbit and am now finishing the Grapes of Wrath that I somehow missed during high school and like a lot despite its darkness.  


The point of all this is that I think I´ve always had a good vocabulary because I read so much when I was little.  When you read a lot, language worms its way into crevasses of your brain without you even noticing.  I was pretty eloquent for a kid and as an adult have pulled out words that have surprised people.  Not because I´m trying to be fancy, but it just seems like the best word for the moment.  It´s nice to have such a large toolbox to use to express myself.


But I feel like I´m losing some if it being here in Peru.  I speak English a few times a week and am finding myself searching for words.  I see it in my fellow volunteers as well.  Sometimes, all activity will stop as we collectively search for a word that we know we know somewhere in the dusty parts of our language centers, but can´t find.  It usually ends up being some high school level vocab word.  I try to write here or lyrics for songs or work on my grad school papers, and it´s difficult.  I feel like my writing is 80% of what it could be because my upper level English is fuzzing out.  


Of course my Spanish has improved in this time.  I speak smoothly and rapidly and can give a good speech or charla when I need to.  But it´s not sophisticated or beautiful.  It´s not everything that language can be.  It´s still utilitarian.  I think it´ll continue to improve with my time here, but I don´t believe it will ever be at the level that my English was.


My conclusion is that I´m a Spanglish speaker.  I have competence, but lack mastery in both.  I´m hoping that my English will come back when I get back to the states, and that my Spanish will improve in the year and a half I have left.  In the meantime, I´m going to keep reading and hopefully that will bolster my vocab.  We´ll see.  Until then, we´ll continue with elaborate descriptions of the words we´re trying to find.  




Stay tuned for the story of my trip!  There are some good parts.  I´ll be writing it up at home and bringing in installments when they´re ready.