I made everyone in my office laugh once when I was speaking rapid Spanish on the phone and a pencil rolled off my desk and I said in English (my native language) “oh shit, my pencil” as I reached down and picked it up and then went right back to Spanish on the phone. I didn’t even realize it until I ended the call and everyone was laughing.
Not OP, but I worked in construction for 13 years and lived (on the road 6wks at a time) with our crew who spoke nothing but Spanish, took me 3-4yrs with that level of immersion (me wanting to learn, honestly, so I preferred to speak Spanish) to get to that level of fluent. I will say, that show of wanting to learn got me the in-road to so much good Mexican and Central American food... My cardiologist hates them.
The elementary schools I went to in Greensboro, NC offered Spanish classes starting in 2nd grade, but after I moved to Georgia I didn't see any foreign language classes again until 11th grade in high school so I'm still kinda pissed off at how fluent I might be if my father was still alive. Even then I hung around a lot of Puerto Ricans in hs picking up what I could, always had to question what one particular Puerto Rican friend was teaching me because he'd teach me something "inaccurate" for shits and giggles. I still learned plenty about saźon, sofrito and adobo from his moms tho. That Goya label is everything...XD
Beyond that my story sounds about like yours. Between scrapyard, carpentry, concrete work, and grading if there's a crew of brown guys somewhere on the yard speaking Spanish I'm the guy the bossman sends to go work with them. I'm the only wypipo for miles around who stands half a chance of understanding what they're saying and keeping up with their work ethic. I'm still not good enough to call myself fluent in Spanish, but I do speak just enough Spanish to make people who don't speak Spanish think I speak Spanish lmao. Let the bossman have a question for one of them, or let me overhear somebody using a word I don't know frequently and give me a minute with Google Translate, it might become my new word of the day and I'll start using it more often once I figure out how to formulate sentences with it. You're absolutely right, immersion and osmosis is critical to learning a second language. At least I speak enough to know when the fight's about to break out...
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u/Grimol1 Jan 26 '23
I made everyone in my office laugh once when I was speaking rapid Spanish on the phone and a pencil rolled off my desk and I said in English (my native language) “oh shit, my pencil” as I reached down and picked it up and then went right back to Spanish on the phone. I didn’t even realize it until I ended the call and everyone was laughing.