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| Bar la Boca del León in Plaza Altozano, Sevilla |
“You almost kill yourself (figuratively speaking) studying Spanish for 4 years. Then, one day, you
decide it's time to put your efforts to the test and decide to travel to Seville, stay there for a fortnight and practice your
Spanish ‘face-to-face’ with ‘the locals’ (“los nativos” as they are called over
there).
The cost of the trip almost gets you bankrupt but you don’t care because
‘we only live once’.
You arrive in Seville and immediately love the place. You go directly to your ‘pensión’ and
leave your suitcase there. You should have a rest but you can’t. How can you delay the visit to ‘the Bar’ in
the ‘Oh-so-mythical-Barrio-of-Triana’ that is highly recommended in your Lonely
Planet guide? No, you can't. You freshen up and leave straight away. It's almost midday. It's not too far so you decide to walk.
When you arrive at ‘the Bar’ you are welcomed by a waiter who wants to
take your order and when you are just about to utter your first sentence in
Spanish, (which was going to be “¿tienen albóndigas? (do you have meat
balls?), you see a sign written in Spanish that says: “WE PROMISE NOT TO
LAUGH AT YOUR SPANISH”.
You re-read it. “WE PROMISE NOT TO LAUGH AT YOUR SPANISH” You re-read quickly several times “WE PROMISE NOT TO LAUGH AT
YOUR SPANISH”. Yes, this is clearly what it says. Your brain shifts into
overdrive and in your mind’s eye you picture yourself being laughed at by the
whole bar, about 30 people.
The fact that in the sign it also states clearly that “OUR ENGLISH IS
NOT VERY GOOD” (meaning: “is pretty bad and possibly unintelligible”)
makes no difference to you. You were not expecting this. You did not prepare for this. You could, certainly, engage in a two-way activity: ‘I
laugh at your bad English and you laugh at my bad Spanish’ but you are not
having none of this because you are not the type of person who has fun at other
peoples’ expense.
The waiter is waiting and still talking to you, but you are not listening. You are
so offended that can’t think at all. You stand up, thank him, in English, and
leave the bar.
While you are walking back to the ‘pensión’ sobbing quietly, you hear
the voices of you mother and your grand-mother, both good Methodists and highly
pragmatic ladies saying to you: chin up girl, chin up and wipe out these
tears, it is not that bad.
When you arrive at the pension you think the place looks ‘shady'. You go
straight up to your room, your dark and smelly room you realise now, grab your unpacked suitcase, go back downstairs, check yourself out
and get out of the place as fast as lightning.
Shortly after, inside a taxi, you tell the driver, in a perfectly
pitched Oxford accent, ‘To the airport, please’.
You will go back home as quickly as possible and forget about learning
any f*ck*ng foreign language for the rest of your life, that is, forever and
ever, or, if you know any Latin: for ‘seacula saeculorum’.
Who told you that in a global world people need to speak languages? This is not a global world, this is a
rude world. Being insulted like
that, after all these years of study, and in Seville, of all places.
From now on it will be ‘English only’ and for a hobby learning to play
the flute or do some bird watching do not seem such a bad idea.
THE END
The silly story is not real, obviously, but the sign shown in the photo is. It's form the bar 'la Boca del León' in Plaza Altozano, Sevilla). I have written this because as a foreign language teacher of adults of many years, I like to help students who struggle to overcome the fear of failure and the fear of being ridiculed. With languages you can make mistakes "all-the-time"so you need some perspective regarding your linguistic performance.
If I had to assign a moral of this modern fable would be: "Do not make a mountain out of a molehill."
Learning a
language involves at some stage ‘to go solo’ that is, getting out of the comfort zone that is the classroom, your class mates, the computer, or whatever applications you have used to learn and study the language. The time comes when you have to jump into the void, so to speak, and this can feel awful but it should not be.
Learning a language gives a learner, not only the satisfaction of communicating in another language, but also a sense of personal achievement, the satisfaction of having overcome many barriers including the fear of being ridiculed, criticised or laughed at. If this happens, which it may not, the important thing is the way you look at it: "what does it matter, making a mistake, receiving an ironic comment?" It matters zero. What matters is that your efforts and years of study pay off, in a personal way. Yes, deciding to make the effort to communicate is a solo trip, like a young bird learning to fly, but it is a trip where you will meet people, where you will go to places, real and unreal, and where you will say "Gosh, I like it so much being here!"
