By Mike Stoltz
As an exchange student with the College of William and Mary, I was led to Montpellier, France. It was a remarkable summer for a 21-year-old who had never been further outside the state of California than South Lake Tahoe in Nevada. There were probably up to 15 different cultures there that summer, each with a separate dorm floor full of fascinating creatures of interest. The Anglos had a floor, the Latins another, the Scandinavians were next to the Germans, and, well, the Italians had to be placed across the lawn, most likely because of their heightened decibel level.
It was fraternal and fun. On Friday nights each culture would prepare a stage skit in a big auditorium, playing out our experiences in France and the language/immersion school that previous week. I was often the brunt of a joke by way of a French kid posing as an American surfer with a baseball cap barging through all the other students’ Friday night skits, stumbling cluelessly shouting, “ou est le bierre!” It would not be the first or last time my dignity was left at LAX.
But one night, parked along the effervescent phosphorus-filled Mediterranean in a tiny Citroen completely unequipped to handle eight adults, something amazing happened to me. What I remember as surely as night follows day was the sounds of Babylon. These kids went from French to German to Spanish to Italian and back to my native language. Sure, I was high, but not what you’d think. I was overcome with admiration, envy, and a new goal—I’m going to be them someday. So, to make a long story short, through approximately 14 more of these “immersion” courses in France, six in Italy, and one in Vienna, I did become just like them. It took a while, but by the time I was in my early 40s, I was fluent in three foreign languages, save one—Spanish.
To this day, I cannot tell you how insane this is. I grew up in Southern California as an entrepreneur with restaurants, retail stores, and real estate. Think cleaning crews, back of the house operations, downtown convenience markets, gardeners, pool people. Spanish was the most practical language I could know. Yet, I didn’t like it. I’m not trying to alienate my new hosts here in Mexico, but it’s still my least favorite language, and I’m not sure why. But I really do want to change my attitude. And I’m working hard at it. I’m just not “feeling it” yet. Let me explain.
In my experience, when you know a language, it does something to your brain. And the more you know, the more acutely this remarkable feeling is. For example, when I speak French, I have this sense of “politeness,” “civility,” “graciousness.” Remember, French is the language of diplomacy. When I speak Italian, I feel passionate! My decibel level is elevated, along with the full motion of my shoulders, arms, and hands. While I sound angry and menacing, it’s the most alive and authentic I feel of all the languages I know.
When I speak German, I feel highly alert, awake, attentive. This may be because, in German, the verb almost always goes at the end of the sentence, so you really need to pay close attention to what a German speaker says because you won’t know what is meant until they are finished. Another thing I like about German—other than its derivations of English like “das wetter ist warm” or “das wetter ist Kalt” or “was is Das?”—is the other logical aspects. For example, “eine handshue” is a shoe for the hand—or a glove. And what more logical iteration of “kindergarten” than a garden of kids.
But I always like to take us back here to San Miguel de Allende. This is the only place I’ve ever studied Spanish. I thought it would be pretty easy as it’s a romantic language like Italian and French. The study of those languages surely advanced me along, but there are considerable differences where it really counts. You can’t bank on the verb, for example “to eat,” which is “manger” in French and “mangiare” in Italian being a derivative in Spanish, where it is “comer.”
This is one simple example, but I’ve found multiple verbs where I thought I’d ace the sentence because the first two were similar only to be looked at in a quizzical manner by Mexicans who respond, to my dismay, “no hablo inglés.”
But I refuse to be defeated by my never-ending language gaffes and misspeaks and will continue the immersion process here. Besides that, you can have more opportunities for business, fun, and even some innocent mischief along the way. ¿Por qué no?
