Español Con Barreras_Garcia

I walked into the room giving a quick look and releasing my breathe in sign of relief. I took my seat and quickly started a conversation with one of the students.

“We had homework last night?”

“No, but we do have a quiz on chapter 9”

“Oh my god, really? I still don’t have all the words memorized!”

“Tough luck, here she comes now”

“Buenos días señores y señoras, ¿como están?”

Everyone at the same time “Bien”

“Y tu, yacca. ¿Como estas?

“Bien, me siente un poco desprimida”

“Deprimida*, bueno comencemos la clase de hoy.”

I’m starting to get use to getting corrected all the time in a language I thought I knew so well. My mom would always brag about how well I know the language and that would always make me feel confident when Spanish comes up. Well it used to always make me feel confident, up until the day I stepped foot into room 204 Spanish 202. It was a small classroom. One wall of the room was full of books while a long table took up the rest of the space in the room with chairs around it. It was a similar set-up where meeting are usually held. Aside from that it was just 12 other students and I for the next 2 hours and 30 minutes.

            The first time I went to Spanish class I felt very confident, it was going to be an easy A. I was thinking that I had already learned to read, write, and speak the language and that there was nothing else to learn. I was wrong. The more classes I had the more I realized how little I knew the language and how much I needed the class. At home I would have normal conversations with my parents in Spanish. We would talk about my day, and everything in general and very little times did my parents ever correct me when I said something wrong.

After having passed midterms in Spanish I started to over think the way I talk. I started to realize how I was struggling in class trying to process everything the teacher was saying to me. I started to lose confidence in myself, began to believe I didn’t know Spanish the way I thought I did. It got to the point where I started to forget the name of things in Spanish, I would even have trouble finishing a sentence. I began to get quieter during class, scared that if I participated I would get it wrong. It’s never wrong to fail; failing just gives you another chance to make it better. In my case I was scared that being the only Hispanic in the class everyone expected me to know it all and if I were to be incorrect the other students would think less of me. Although, there were those moments where she called on me and I ran out of luck.

“Yacca, ¿puedes repasar numero dos?”

“Si claro, uhm. ¿Presente perfecto de subjuntivo?”

“No, es el pluscuamperfecto de subjuntivo. Lo usamos para expresar una de las categorías enlistadas por encima con referencia al momento anterior u otra acción pasada”

I would stare at the professor as if she were speaking to me in another language. I knew the words she was using but they didn’t seem to come together in my head when she would explain it to me. The more frequent encounters of being corrected left me believing I didn’t know the language. Therefore this left me to the point where I had multiple errors while talking, which usually wouldn’t occur with me.

            The more often I thought about it more often I realized that it wasn’t my fault as to why I spoke Spanish the way I spoke it. With unpronounced letters here, and different words over there, for different items it all was unclear. The way the teacher was teaching the rest of the students to speak Spanish was completely different as to how I spoke it. The way my family speaks it in the environment I grew up in. Since I only was ever around people who spoke Spanish the way I did I was prone to believe that was the only way to speak Spanish. Since the professor would always correct the way I spoke and wrote Spanish that made me feel as if I were talking wrong all these years. When really it was just different ways of speaking the language. You have the slang Dominican Spanish I speak and the proper Spanish I was learning.

            Until I made this realization I was losing pride in my language. Started to think less of the way my aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, and parents spoke. I then had more pride in whom I really was, and I’m glad I talk the way I do and am the way I am. As the Spanish author Gloria Anzaldua said in Oye Como Ladra: el lenguaje de la frontera “So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language”. From now on I’ll take more pride in my language, Instead of thinking less of myself and losing confidence I will  defend my own.