The Wall That Stands Between Me and Spanish

There is an invisible wall that stands between me and Spanish, the language which I now speak more often than Lithuanian, my mother tongue

Today, for the first time in a year and a half, I’ve decided to work at a cafeteria in La Latina, my neighborhood in Madrid, the city in which I’ve been living for the past thirteen years. I’ve been avoiding public indoor spaces since the beginning of the pandemic, but the situation in Spain has improved, and this morning I’ve convinced myself that there may not be a better moment for taking a stab at returning to some kind of normalcy.

I hesitate at the open door when I see there are more people inside, but in the end, I gather all my courage and enter. I spot a table at a brightly lit corner, not too far from the open door. I take off my backpack, sit down, get my laptop out, and in a minute a waitress approaches my table to take my order. She asks me, in Spanish, what I would like to order, but her tone is tentative, and her face expresses a question, a doubt whether I would understand her. When I ask her, in fluent Spanish, about what breakfast options they have, I can see her face relax, and she even offers me a quick smile. We have established a common ground.

But when I’m done working and wave at the bartender to request the bill, before I have the chance to open my mouth, I can see his brow knit into a familiar frown that tells me he is getting ready for me to say something unintelligible. And even when I ask for the bill in Spanish, which I know is hardly distinguishable from that of someone born in Spain, his frown doesn’t dissolve, and he asks me to repeat it, making me stumble on the same words, and this time I know I sound like a guiri, someone who is not only a foreigner but a plainly obvious one.

Jhumpa Lahiri, an American author of Bengali origin, writes in her book In Other Words, in which she analyzes her love relationship with Italian, and which she wrote in Italian before it got translated into her native English:

“Here is the border I will never manage to cross. The wall that will remain forever between me and Italian, no matter how well I learn it. My physical appearance.”

I can feel that invisible wall standing between me and Spanish, the language which I now speak more often than Lithuanian, my mother tongue. No matter how long I have been studying it, nor how long I have been living in Spain or how madrileña I feel in my day-to-day, the wall remains. Or should I call it “the visible wall”, as it’s obviously evoked by my appearance — blond hair, fair skin, blue eyes — a typical guiri.

Lahiri talks about two different linguistic experiences which I also recognize as a foreigner in a country whose language I speak well.

There’s the experience described above, when I have to approach someone that, because of my appearance, expects me to speak in broken Spanish, English, or in anything else they are not going, or are not even planning to understand. I feel intimidated by their anticipated irritation, that mask of annoyance they put on before I even have the chance to utter my first words in Spanish, which makes me feel like I’m about to start an exam that I have few chances to pass. More often than not — and as is expected from me — I fail.

“They don’t understand me because they don’t want to understand me; they don’t understand me because they don’t want to listen to me, accept me. That’s how the wall works. Someone who doesn’t understand me can ignore me, doesn’t have to take account of me. Such people look at me but don’t see me. They don’t appreciate that I am working hard to speak their language; rather, it irritates them.” — Jhumpa Lahiri

That experience, which I can still avoid in Madrid, is magnified and becomes almost inevitable in villages or places where foreigners are not common. I am seen as a guiri, the vicious circle of expectations perpetuates itself, and I stammer and trip on the simplest of words — just as I did when I came to Spain on exchange in my twenties and had to survive in a foreign language for the first time in my life.

And then there is a completely different experience, that of long-lasting conversations with friends, people that know me well and do not question my Spanish, people that accept me and encourage me to continue my love relationship with it.

I cannot fail when I know I’m not taking an exam.