Pustolovina: adventure in Serbian

Monday, June 12, 2006

SerbspaƱol

I have lost my ability to speak Spanish.

Last week, a woman from Madrid came to visit our office and I could not speak with her. I understood most of what she said, although Spanish accents are very difficult for my Latin-American-accent-trained ear. But I could not say much of anything. I would try to put together sentences in my head and do things like conjugate Spanish verbs in Serbian ways or mix vocabulary terribly. And what I could say had a Serbian accent. Ugly.

I knew this was coming. My ability to write Spanish has been deteriorating over recent months. A week ago, I was typing an e-mail and forgot the word for Friday.

It's so frustrating to be losing my Spanish. In the long term, it will probably be more useful than Serbian. In the short term, it is not, so I will continue to replace Spanish vocabulary with Serbian words.

I am in awe of polyglots.

3 Comments:

  • At 1:25 AM, Blogger Bg anon said…

    This reminds me of my sisters experience when she visits Belgrade. The lanugage tube in the brain obviously gets a bit confused.

     
  • At 4:03 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I remember when a deaf woman started working at my office. I tried to recall the sign language I learned in grad school, but I literally felt like the speech area of my brain was going to explode. Obviously no mixing of words, but my brain could not handle it.
    Momdre

     
  • At 12:02 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Such things are not truly lost. Two weeks and you regain it.

     

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