Aero: Sarah Warner – Costa Rica 2016 – Learning the Language

Creative Commons Image via The LEAF Project

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In preparations for this trip, I had in mind that I would need to know some Spanish terms in order to understand certain people and parts of the trip.  However, I did not know how much of the language I would truly be hearing.  I took Spanish courses throughout high school, all the way through college level my senior year.  Although it came pretty easy to me in high school, I came to the realization that I had lost my ability to form sentences, let alone talk fluently.

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Sarah Warner

So as one can imagine, when we discussed our fears and worries with the rest of the group, I (among many others) had the biggest fear of the language barrier.  What was I going to do when I could not speak with my host family? Will they think I am an ignorant American with no respect for the Spanish culture? Luckily, it only took hours in the beautiful country of Costa Rica for these fears to float away.  When our host family picked us up at the airport, Maria Marta, our host mom spoke English pretty clearly.  Her two sons Marco and Daniel spoke English almost fluently and they were very patient with us non-Spanish speakers.  This being said, it was not only them.  Almost everywhere we went the Ticos/Ticas were patient with us and eager to learn about us and talk with us. 

Along with traveling to a foreign country, comes funny stories that couple with the language barrier.  One example of this happened a day that we all decided to get ice cream.  Even though the cashier and I could somewhat understand each other, I was having a hard time telling her that I wanted “mint”.  Naturally, I pointed out a green ice cream.  When I took my first bite however, it ended up being pistachio! Another funny story is when we were talking with our host family over dinner and Alyssa was talking about our day and how we played “pato pato, ganso” with the girls at the home and instead of pato she said a bad swear word.  Everyone laughed and the host family understood her mistake. One final story that goes with the language barrier that is not so funny is that Bri got jipped off in the mall when buying her food.  Not everyone is as loving as our host families, and some people try to trick non-Spanish speakers.  Luckily, Barbara talked to the woman and Bri got her money back.

My finals thought on learning the language is that this trip made me WANT to learn.  Crazy right? Even if it weren’t Spanish, I would really love to be fluent in another language.  I find it inspiring when people know multiple languages, and it would be really cool to communicate with people of a different culture using their language.

Sarah Warner
LEAF Contributor
ML@FLCC: Costa Rica 2016

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