A benchmark, and thoughts on fluency.

     Before I came to Buenos Aires I watched one of the more famous Argentine films, El secreto de sus ojos, with the intention of helping my ears get more used to the accent.  I was unable to find a version with subtitles in either language and was forced to rely on my ears alone. El secreto de sus ojos is not an easy movie, it's an intense crime drama with lots of police jargon, thrown at you in the fast slang-ridden Argentine-accented Spanish and.. needless to say, when I watched it in February I was suddenly very discouraged and overwhelmed by how little of it I'd been able to understand.

     It's easy to feel as if my Spanish hasn't greatly improved since I got here, as change happens slowly over time and you don't notice it from day to day. Additionally, I've come to realize that the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know, and the thus the stupider you feel. I am no longer pleased that I can express myself; I am frustrated that I cannot express myself well. I get frustrated when I don't know the word for "bulky," even though I could give you a dozen that mean "big, large, wide, huge, intrusive, clumsy." But I've made myself take note recently of all the words, phrases, or concepts that I hadn't yet mastered four months ago, and have to admit that maybe I've learned something here.

     My goal is and has been for awhile "to be fluent." But when my friends from back home ask me if I'm fluent yet, I realize that the concept of "fluency" is a lot more ambiguous than I had previously thought. My immediate reaction is "ha! no." because I know just how much I have left to learn, and I know I am far from expressing myself as well as a native speaker. But taking a step back, I guess it depends on how you define fluent. I've taken essay tests on marketing without using a dictionary. I've gone on dates with boys who don't speak English. I don't plan out my Spanish presentations word-for-word anymore; I write some bullet points and improvise. I've been the only English-speaker at social gatherings and had a great time. And any sort of anxiety related to Spanish in any situation is pretty much disappeared. Do I feel ready to give a report on the evening news? No. But I feel as if I could confidently go into a job interview in Spanish and not make a fool of myself. I don't know if I will ever get to a point where I consider myself straight-up fluent, but I'd like to. I know it's a long process, but here I am, in the process.

     I had to watch El secreto de sus ojos for my cinema class and almost started laughing tonight when I realized I understood at least 85% of what was said at all times. It seems so simple too! I'm not sure how I couldn't do it four months ago. What a fantastic feeling.

Buenas noches,
Abby

Translation: agglutinated. Stop Spanish. Just stop. 

P.S. I get continually frustrated too by the number of words I underline in a text, only to look them up and find I don't know them in English either. How can they expect that from us? Like lustro--what is a lustrum? (A period of five years). And polivalencia? It means multifacetedness. That's not even a word in English. Or, the very very specific. Like escardador--a man who weeds cornfields. Yes, let me add that to my knowledge bank.