How I Discovered My Second Language Rough Draft
❝The limits of my language are the limits of my world.❞
‒Ludwig Wittgenstein
My mother grew up in the
projects of western Puerto Rico. Her family could barely make ends meet each
month, and she struggled to get through school. Twenty years later, while many
of her classmates were still in the same neighborhood suffering from drug
addictions, she was finishing her master’s degree in New York City, and
learning English. I have always been proud of my mother, and thankful that she
found the strength to break the loop of poverty and dysfunction for a better
life. Since I can remember she has always told me how learning English opened
up the world to her, and for that same reason she taught me and my siblings her
native language. Just like learning English broadened her perspective of the
world, she knew Spanish would broaden mine. And she was right.
I
learned my second language as a child, but as I grew I never appreciated it. It
was simply an extra ability I had, a secret code that I used when communicating
with my mother. I never thought I had something special, and I never thought I
would loose it. But as I grew and began spending more time away from home my
second language began to suffer. I began to forget words, slowly but steadily,
and soon found it harder to speak with my relatives. It startled me, but I
found I didn’t care enough to make the effort to practice. None of my friends
spoke Spanish, or knew anyone besides me who did, so my abilities didn’t seem
in demand, or even welcomed when I revealed them. Then, during the winter of
2011, my father received orders to deploy to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We were used
to moving around, but this Naval Base would be the most unique places I have
ever lived. My first impression was far from inspiring: an arid, isolated base
with less than 4,000 inhabitants, including military and civilians. Because of
the US embargo, we could only leave the base on a plane to the states, and
after learning this I was further convinced that this would be a dull and
uninteresting oversea experience. But as my family settled in and I began to
submerse myself in the ‘Gitmo Culture’ as everyone called it, my life
drastically changed.
About half of the people who had come there to
fill the civilian jobs were from other countries, primarily the Philippines,
Jamaica, the Middle-east, and Cuba itself. I had never lived with so many
different kinds of people before, and most importantly, been around so many
different languages. At school I met kids that had been all over the world,
from all kinds of families, cultures, and religions. I got my first job in the
local library and spent my days trying to understand crowds of Jamaican workers
chatting in their native Patois, and when soldiers checked out their books I
would try to guess where they came from by their accents. I was constantly
amazed and delighted by this new multi-culture world, and yet I felt inferior.
I came from a tight, primarily Caucasian town that frankly never looked far
beyond the next County Fair. My friends had all grown up together, where dating
each other, and hoped to marry each other. Even though I had practically been
born on an airplane, flying from Puerto Rico to Washington DC to Florida or wherever
my dad was called, I had spent enough time in one town to forget that I was
worldly. It’s funny though, how one glimpse of a new and mysterious world can
forever fill you with wanderlust. I immediately began to perk up whenever I
heard an elderly Cuban shouting in Spanish over a tense game of dominos, or
when a fellow student mentioned he was from Argentina. For the first time I
began to feel proud of knowing another language, that I could come out of my
shell and speak freely without the fear of surprised sideways glances or frowns
in my direction. I didn’t, however, understand the full extent of my mother’s
gift until I caught the entrepreneurship bug during the tropical winter I
turned fifteen.
They
called it the monthly Art Fair, a low key gathering of fellow crafters who
would put their creative masterpieces up for sale. I, being the penny pinching
and scheming teenager I was and might still be, saw it as a fantastic chance to
make some money. If you had come to the December 2011 Art Fair, you would have
seen about twenty vendors, at the mercy of southern winds, frantically trying
to sell their product and keep it taped to their table at the same time. You
would have seen me as well, sitting alone at a table covered in trembling
Christmas cards hand painted by yours truly, trying to put on the confident
face of a salesman. Business was great, and a few hours before the fair ended I
was considering packing up and taking my plump jar of cash with me, when a
young man walked up to me and began gesturing to my cards and making strange
hand signals. All the poise and confidence that had been growing in me that
night immediately blew away with the wind. I was panic stricken. Was this man
insulting me? Was he trying to ask me something about my cards? I didn’t know,
I didn’t know! Even now I couldn’t say what it was that made me ask “do you speak Spanish?” but
I am so happy I did. Immediately his face brightened, and he smiled
triumphantly: “Si! Si!” I felt a rush of relief and began to explain where I
was from. We talked for the rest of the night. I would later learn that the man I met was
a Cuban refugee, who had left his home one night and swam for miles, hiding
during the day and constantly fearing that Cuban officials would find him. He
had left his parents and friends, never to see them again, and began a near
hopeless quest to escape Cuba by the sea. He and twenty other young men crowded
onto a small raft made of trash that they had scavenged, without belongings or
food, and together made their way towards the haven of Guantanamo Bay, the
nearest US territory. There was a small chance that they would be spotted by
the coast guard, and even smaller that they wouldn’t be sent back to their
starved and poverty stricken life in Cuba, but they succeeded. He and his
fellow survivors would raise money during their stay at the military base and
later move to Australia, beginning a new life full of endless opportunity. But
the night of that Art Fair I didn’t know all this, all I knew was that this
stranger and I had something in common. Our language. And if it wasn't for
that, we might still be there trying to communicate through hand signals and
broken English. That experience changed my perspective of the world forever. It
wasn't a grand, public thing that made me suddenly begin proclaiming that I was
bilingual, but it started a very important trend. I began to practice my
Spanish, watch movies, listen to the Cuban radio, and take advanced classes at
school. I was surprised to find that I was still incredibly fluent, I just
needed to prefect my grammar. Instead of hiding my heritage, I began to embrace
it, and to open up to other people. Knowing more than one language can break
all kinds of barriers between people, and find common ground where you never
thought there was. I have made so many friends that I would have never known if
I hadn’t put myself out there and practice speaking Spanish with them.
Sometimes I could speak the language better than them, other times they would
gently correct my misuse of a word, but we would always have a good time. When
you speak in a foreign language with someone you suddenly begin to truly listen
to them, hanging on every word and comment with relish. Before I came to Cuba I
never had experienced that, and it has changed my life for the better. No
matter where I live now I feel like there is a world outside of my own, a world
full of culture and language and experiences. I had known Spanish since I was a
child, and yet I hadn’t discovered it until now.
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