Currently, I am enrolled in a Language and Culture class in the University of Salamanca. I am learning about the different languages spoken in Spain. Today, Spain’s main co-official languages are Basque, Catalan, Galician, and Valencian and all Spanish citizens have the right to use these languages. Accordingly, public education is offered in Spain’s co-official languages in their respective autonomous communities.
In Salamanca there is no co-official language. The language spoken here by everyone is Spanish, yet, the Spanish way. I consider myself to be bilingual. I don’t recall a time in my life where I couldn’t speak, write, read, think, and dream in both Spanish and English. I consider myself to be a native speaker of both languages.
I never had to deal with accents and slang words as much as I do here, in Spain. I begin to get a little nervous when all my fellow American peers stare at me speaking Spanish to the locals and when I don’t understand a word, I feel disappointed in myself. The most popular word in Spain has to be, Valé. Every one of all ages uses this word regularly. It may be the fact that I speak English as well as Spanish, but I am used to saying O.K. but while in Spain you must try to speak as the Spaniards do. When a Spaniard says, Valé, you must respond with the same word. A few times I’ve responded with O.K. and then they look confused and repeat once more, Valé, expecting me to respond culturally and idiomatically correctly.
The same way I become confused sometimes, I also find myself trying to explain what I want to say in a way that they can understand. I am not sure if it’s just the people of Salamanca or maybe just the youth (the majority of the people who I’ve had conversations with are of college age) but the people here talk really really fast. At first I tried to keep up, but now I am beginning to develop a happy medium. Some people that I’ve spoke to seemed as if they were anxious and trying to get every word out in one breath. It’s actually quite odd for me to hear someone talking so fast, even in New York.
As I mentioned before, the University of Salamanca is known world-wide and people from all different parts of the world come here to study. Not only am I quickly adapting to the Spanish accent and slang, but I also see myself wanting to learn a little Portuguese when I meet fellow students from Brazil or trying to brush up on my French whenever I meet someone from France.
This week, I felt as if I was being discriminated against while my white peers and I went to grab a cup of coffee at a café inside the Plaza Mayor. I’m not sure if the person was prejudice or just having a bad day and he/she was deliberately not being courteous and polite because as soon as we sat down my peers just asked for a cup of joe while I asked for the menu and thought about what I wanted to order for a few minutes.
Overall, wherever you may travel, you will find people with all different kinds of personalities, likes, and dislikes. Ironically, the same personalities exist everywhere. It almost seems as if there are only a handful of different personalities in the world and everyone more or less fits into one. Realistically, Salamanca is not the safe haven I wrote about in my last blog. It’s a town, similar to any college town in New York, with people of all different ages and character.
Stay tuned. For the next blog I will talk about my experience in Madrid and a rather interesting similarity I discovered between Latinos and the Spaniards.
