Group Post: Spanish, English or Spanglish?

I happened to see this on Emily´s blog, so it looks like this time around, Fned is organizing a group post. Rock on, I say. ;)

This is a very interesting topic to me, and one that I am involved with on a daily basis, as I communicate with D. When we first started hanging out (as friends) in July 2007, my Spanish was definitely iffy... especially my listening skills. He would call me up to see if I wanted to do something, and the conversation would usually go something like this:

D: Quieres hacer algo esta noche?
Me: Ummmmm... (pause while I try to translate what I want to say in my head)... sì. (Real complex response there, Jessica.)
D: Yapo, estoy en la casa ahora, dònde estàs tù?
Me: Estoy en el departamento.
D: Ok, te puedo buscar en como 20 minutos, te tinca?
Me: Como?? (thinking, what the heck does ¨te tinca¨mean?)
D: Te puedo buscar en tu departamento, ya?
Me: ...... Ok.
D: Nos vemos en un rato entonces.
Me: Como?
D: Nos .. vemos.. en .. un rato.
Me: Ahhhhhhh ok, sì, nos vemos!

... Good grief, thinking back on our cell phone conversations pains me. It was so hard for me to understand him! Things were easier in person, but still. And now? Over a year later, I am glad to say that my Spanish is much improved, especially my listening skills. I now understand basically 100% of what D says in Spanish, and what I don´t understand is a great learning opportunity for me. The vast majority of the time that we are together is spent speaking in Spanish. For me, this is great, because I´m still not quite fluent, but I feel like I´m on the road to being so. I do try to encourage D to speak to me in English sometimes, because he´s definitely not fluent and needs to practice much more. His main problem though is that he´s shy when it comes to speaking English, especially in front of his family (which I don´t quite understand, because he´s the one that knows the most English as far as his family goes). But the boy is SMART, and whenever he does speak in English, it´s almost always correct!

As far as Spanglish goes, we definitely speak our fair share of that, especially me. Sometimes I´ll start a sentence in Spanish and then switch to English if I get frustrated. I know that´s not good to do often though, if I want to be fluent! A big part of becoming fluent is struggling through those times when it would just be easier to switch to your native tongue. But let´s face it, sometimes Spanglish is just easier, and can definitely make for some funny situations. ;)