Jeff Cangialosi

The height of my Spanish proficiency occurred when I was 20 years old. It was the Fall of my Junior year of college. I had just come back from spending the summer in a language emersion program in Barcelona. That fall I enrolled in a Spanish literature course. I had finally graduated from the formal vocabulary and grammar drilling Spanish classes and was at a point where I could actually start doing the fun stuff, like reading the great authors of the Spanish language.

Unfortunately, from that point on, my Spanish has only gone down hill. Like most college graduates, I remember telling myself I wouldn’t be one of those people who let my language skills languish. I would find a way to continue practicing as I entered early adulthood. Like most, life gets busy, priorities shift, and of course I let those language skills languish. I had brief flourishes of trying to practice my Spanish during my 20s, but as I boarded a plane to Mexico City earlier this week, I realized just how limited my Spanish language abilities were.

It was mostly depressing to realize that I had let several years of hard work slip away, but as I struggled to recall words, form sentences, and understand the barrage of words coming my way, I could feel an old muscle coming back to life. It is truly incredible how memory and recall work. In no way would my Spanish be considered passable, and I often had the embarrassment of trying to speak in Spanish to only have someone kindly respond back to me in English, but I found myself discovering phrases and words from deep recesses of my brain. 

Let’s see if I actually make any effort to rekindle my Spanish language skills, but it was at least encouraging to use the muscle again and realize I have some baseline to draw on if I’m willing to sustain some effort going forward.