Aero: Marriah Gough – Costa Rica 2015 – Learning the Language

Aero: Marriah Gough – Costa Rica 2015 – Learning the Language
Creative Commons Image via The LEAF Project

Aero: Marriah Gough – Costa Rica 2015 – Learning the Language

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Marriah Gough

Before attending this trip, the term Spanish had not been in my vocabulary or mindset since sophomore year in high school. During that time, I was finishing up my third year of classes, preparing for the final assessment, the regent’s exam. When taking the classes throughout high school, Spanish seemed to come pretty easy to me. We learned many vocabulary terms and there was a lot of congregating of verbs, helping us make the correct pronunciations and recognize different tenses. We learned not only from the teacher in an oral manner, but we also learned through a textbook and study guides in a visual form, allowing us to recognize terms when we saw them, rather than just hearing them. For myself, that was helpful, it helped me recognize what the terms would look like, making it easier to recognize if I came across them on posters or books. However, how much Spanish do you actually read? Spanish is more of an auditory language, therefore when coming to Costa Rica, looking over old terms and notes from high school did not necessarily help too much.

ML@FLCC Costa Rica
2015 Flickr Gallery

After finishing up with customs and getting our luggage, we were finally able to see our families. From the moment I met them, it took my breath away in a sense. I was excited to meet them, but the anxiety just sunk in really quick. The Spanish they were speaking seemed like a legit foreign language to me; not like Spanish in high school. Everyone was speaking so much faster, and so fluent I barely had time to react or figure out exactly what they were saying. It seemed as if I was able to pick up on just about one or two words every sentence, and had to try and figure out what they were saying through those one or two terms. It was certainly challenging, and definitely not what I was used to. Also, just sitting back and listening to people carry on conversations was different. Coming from a person who speaks English and only English, I could tell that I had a distinct look of awe as well as confusion on my face simply because of the difference in language compared to high school, as well as how neat it was to hear the true language being spoken. When it came to carrying on conversations with my host family or venders, things got a bit complicated. There were times in which I spoke English out of habit, and got the look from them that I often had throughout the trip, consisting of confusion, simply because I was speaking a foreign language. I would have to go back and try again in Spanish, or use hand motions or point to what I was meaning to communicate. It was tricky. It was weird to think that English is considered a foreign language. Until one actually witnesses a different language personally, the idea of English being a foreign language doesn’t seem real. Not all individuals that I was able to interact with spoke only Spanish; a few spoke English but it was not as fluent as our English. It was just like us Americans trying to speak Spanish, recognizable but not fluent. Both ways, terms had to be spoken slowly, and a majority of the time to be repeated, but that allowed for better comprehension and clarity which helped. So, in a sense, it was equal. They helped us, we helped them, an overall learning experience for both nationality’s. As time progressed, my Spanish vocabulary broadened and was used more frequently, but coming from a person who has spoken nothing but English for twenty one years, jumping into an environment completely different was certainly challenging, but making that much more of a viable, and cultural experience that I could not get from a textbook.

Marriah Gough
LEAF Contributor