Pretty much since the beginning of this journey of learning Spanish, I've been thinking about an analogy to help describe the language learning process. A few Star Wars characters stand out to me as emblematic of certain levels of language fluency. WARNING: this may prove completely senseless for some people but may turn out somewhat coherent (or at least mildly entertaining) for others.
CHEWBACCA: The furry Wookiee who speaks a completely unintelligible language for us humans to understand. When we first arrived to Spain, this is pretty much how people sounded to me. I simply could not make much sense of what they wanted to tell me, and I couldn't express what I wanted to to them. It was like trying to have a conversation with a Wookiee: 'GrrrrrHughhhghgWaawwaawwwwww...': huh?
HAN SOLO: He's the daring intergalactic companion of Chewie who is one of the few humans who can actually understand the giant fur ball. I'm not sure if he really speaks the Wookiee language, but it's clear that he understands enough to be able to translate for Chewie. After about 6 months of living here in Spain, I was beginning to get to this 'Han Solo' stage, understanding a good deal of what my neighbors were trying to tell me and being able to respond in simple and broken ways to them, even being able to translate a bit, as long as the Spanish speaker wasn't going too fast.
YODA: Yeah, he's the little green guy who is the Grand Jedi Master who trains Luke Skywalker. But for our purposes here, his language abilities in English are quite adequate although he often messes up the word order and expresses things in awkward and funny ways. At McDonald's, instead of saying, 'I'd like to have a Big Mac with fries,' he'll say, 'Mmmm, a Big Mac and fries I would like to eat, mmmm....' I'm guessing that that's what I sound like many days when I'm speaking Spanish: pretty much intelligible, but awkward and a bit funny to listen to.
The good news is that the longer I'm here, the more I live among and interact with people, and the more I focus on perfecting the language, the more progress I see, especially when I look back to the days just after our arrival. There are still days of frustration (even after 10 or 11 months of language school and even longer of just living here), even days when people sound like Chewie to me, but those days are fewer and farther between. So if you think of it, pray that God will help me to continue learning well, to be patient with myself and to pay attention to the way Spaniards express themselves. The Lord has been faithful and is equipping me to be able to share His good news relevantly with people He loves.
