For those of you who have been abroad or are an immigrant, you may know who I’m talking about.

Language warriors are those people who will pick up on you speaking another language and regardless of what you’re doing or the tone of your conversation, interrupt to find out what language you’re speaking and which country speaks it.

This happens most frequently when I’m with the kids and the warriors hear me speaking English to them. I can be in the middle of reprimanding my daughter or trying to understand my son in his two year-old speak, and someone says, “Are you from Trinidad?”. I try not to roll my eyes and in showing the kids good manners, I reply with “No.” Of course the next question is “You are from the United States?” and for reasons I’ll explain in a different post, I say “We’ve lived there, yes.”

Other times, people will hear me speaking Haitian Creole to my husband and once they’ve stared long enough to get our attention ask “De donde son ustedes?” I force a smile and say “Haiti” and quickly try to resume my conversation.

One evening, while we were walking back to our apartment, I noticed this man kind of lurking around us (which was pretty creepy), when all of a sudden he blurts out “Kouman nou ye?” (How are you in Haitian Creole). I have to say that startled me more than his lurking. Turns out, he’s an Algerian who has worked in Haiti and fell in love with the country. He was spending a few days in Caracas and when he thought he overheard us speaking Creole, he had to say “hi”. So, while usually a nuisance, sometimes it turns out okay.

I’m sure these people have good intentions, but it’s almost as though they are patrolling for the opportunity to interrupt someone and ask about his/her heritage. And while I love to talk about my culture, while I’m explaining to my daughter why it is not polite to point at people is really not a good time.

Do you have any stories about run-ins with the language warriors?

Photo credit: The US Army

That’s how I feel about learning Spanish.

The reason that I was MIA last week is because I started my Spanish course. I didn’t want to take an intensive course knowing that my brain shuts down after an hour of learning, but I ended up joining a group already in session that meets three times a week (pretty intense if you ask me). The good thing is the teacher calibrated my level pretty well after a brief conversation, so I think I will be learning a lot. And that’s also part of the problem. Learning a lot for 2 hours, 3 times a week wreaked havoc on my energy level.

I don’t know if it’s because it was the first week, or the gloomy weather we’ve been experiencing, but it’s been a tough week. I went in very excited about increasing my ability to speak Spanish, but apparently I am now at the plateau stage of language development. So, after what I feel was a grueling first week, I now have a harder time expressing myself than before . I guess there lies the advantage of learning a languages of a child – ignorance is bliss.

I think what makes officially learning Spanish difficult is because during the course of the day, I spend at least an hour speaking French and Haitian Creole in addition to English (hence, my crazy two year-old. So, even though I have great opportunities to practice Spanish, sometimes my brain just hurts too much.

My goal for taking this course is to (within 3 months) be able to speak without translating from English in my head first, while also being grammatically correct. That’s not too much to ask, is it?