Martes 24 de Jun 2025
Ciao ciao (voglio dire buongiorno, ma no, no. siamo spagnola e scusa "spagnola" intendo dirlo, non "spagnole", ci sono ragioni, per ora chiamalo la licenza poetica. comunque...)
Sono davvero emozionata ed è strano perché non so se dovrei scrivere in italiano o in inglese e il mio istinto è di scrivere in italiano. Immagino che sia scelta mia. Quando ho iniziato con italiano, stavo ancora parlando in inglese, scrivendo in inglese, per colmare i vuoti della mia conoscenza e le mie abilità ma adesso, mi sento un po’ come se italiano fosse la mia base, la mia origine, e mi sento di usarlo.
Comunque.
Siamo qui, siamo arrivati, e ho già fatto il mio primo passo per parlare español e come ho detto, sono davvero emozionata, sorprendentemente. Veramente, non avevo voglia di parlarlo, scriverlo, impararlo, niente. Non volevo fare niente con spagnolo ma mi sentivo obbligata a tornarci o anche andarci, verso la lingua. Infatti è per questo che ho fatto l’esame CILS. Stavo già pensando a imparare altre lingue, a come si fa, e soprattutto a come potrei imparare spagnolo e sentirmi sicura delle mie abilità con italiano e non sentirmi come confonderei le due. Quindi, in un certo senso, tutto questo è stato una preparazione per spagnolo, ma alla fine, avrei fatto comunque quello che mi pareva. Se dopo aver fatto l'esame, non volessi ancora parlare spagnolo, usare spagnolo, ecc., non lo avrei fatto. In queste ultime due settimane ho considerato tante altre lingue, ma come ho scritto, spagnolo mi è venuto da solo. Por que? Non lo so.
Per me, devo sentirmi davvero attratta, appassionata, per "imparare" una lingua. E mentre lo dico, so che sarà quel punto di vista, che privilegio, ma è vero comunque. Anzi, parliamo veramente. C’è "imparare" e c’è imparare. Posso "imparare" qualsiasi cosa che mi pare. Qualsiasi lingua, qualsiasi abilità se devo farlo. Per imparare, per fondare una nuova relazione vera e forte, una relazione sana, devo avere voglia. Dev’essere desiderio. Attrazione. Non solo per le lingue, per tutto. [Ricorda, per imparare bisogna play, bisogna avere curiosità, dev'essere godimento intellettuale.] Nessuno mi sta costringendo a parlare spagnolo and I don't want to do something just to do it, I want to do something that works. I want to love it. I want to communicate with it (Spanish), truly.
I want to connect and feel when I speak Spanish. When I speak any language. I don't want to operate off of rote memory and recall, rigid knowledge. I want fluidity. I want the play there always is in lanugage. [There's meant to be, anyway]. I want play and I want honesty when I speak any language, so I wait for desire and play. I do not speak otherwise.
I strangely am feeling that play and I'm really excited cause I was worried it wouldn't come back, not for Spanish, anyway. I thought Spanish might be the only language that will always occur with force, have an association to force, and lack desire. But there's play. What a relief.
When I told you Spanish is coming to me, just a few days ago, I let it come immediately and I also acted on it immediately. I've already started my research and that day, I began watching El Niñero. There's still some worry about how my Italian will be affected, but I kept the subtitles in Italian and truly didn't understand much Spanish, not aurally. I'm curious to see how much of my past understanding comes back especially with my compulsions to forget Spanish. I will say, there were times when I somewhat retrospectively understood the Spanish, because I understood the subtitles in Italian and went Oh, that's the Spanish version of that word, it's actually quite the same. It made me wonder why we don't learn Italian in the U.S., at least in New York City, to bridge the gap between English and Spanish. When I first "learned" Spanish, I had spent the entire year prior learning Latin, exactly for this reason (it was an academic setting, not self-guided). While I loved Latin, loved speaking it, loved reading it, and all the things, Italian is not only much closer to Spanish, but also much closer to English. If ever there was to truly be a bridge to fill the gaps, it would be Italian. We also have a significant presence of Italian culture here, again, at least in New York City, but also in the English language in general. Anyway.
I'm excited for Spanish. This is gonna be good. I've already started my research. I've looked up the first 1,000 words and I also have YouTubers bookmarked from preliminary research done about a month ago. I was trying to figure out what else I should be doing and it's really cool, because I can look at what I * did * do. I wrote it all here and that's amazing. I'm going to play around with watching YouTube videos and Netflix — that's really my primary focus — and then I'll switch to studying some actual words. That's my general process. It's funny because this again falls around braiding my hair and I really didn't meant for that to happen. I just noticed while writing here (still in the process of take down, about a quarter of the way). There's something about braiding and being a new person. There's something about braiding and acquiring a new langauge, at least for me. Very intertwined, somehow.
Spanish [to me] is a little closer to English, but less straightforward than Italian [in the sense of pronunciation]. It took no concerted effort to begin pronouncing a majority of Italian words correctly, whether that was with an American accent, or not. Spanish is not the same. Not for me. If starting with hearing the language was a casual entry point for Italian, it's going to be a focused, intentional entry point for Spanish. I need to drown in it. I need the sounds. I need instincts. This will not only be my first step for speaking it, but it will also make learning vocabulary easier if I don't have to slow down and study pronunciations of each word. It will be natural. If I remember correctly, studying the 1,000 most common words was next in my steps with Italian because I wanted to continue learning naturally. I wanted to be able to look at most things, extract a skeleton, and fill in the gaps with context clues and cognates [Like MadLibs]. Learn based on reason. Learn based on connecting things. Learn based on thinking, as opposed to being told and using rote recall. This will also let me read. It should be much easier to acquire books written in Spanish from New York, so that's not a concern, and I will probably once again start with fables and tales. I enjoy these stories, regardless of the age they're believed to be written for and they provide a lot of useful vocabulary and stimulate me. They also tend to cover a wider variety of verb tenses, including the interesting and "rarer" ones (this saved me during my Italian exam— my impromptu reading of Peter Pan about a week prior was almost the only reason I could answer questions on a verb tense I had never studied and didn't anticipate being on the exam). Generally, they're a grammatical goldmine, more so than other works, I would say. They're also playful, and again, some of the most stimulating for me.
Per oggi, ho imparato come scrivere la fecha in español e ho rivista un po' i giorni della settimana e i mesi. Continuerò a guardare El Niñero e forse più tardi, guarderò anche un po’ di YouTube. È difficile non iniziare a "studiare" la lingua con le parole e le liste, ma ogni volta che provo, non sento alcuna sicurezza nella mia capacità di pronunciare le parole e questo non va bene per me, devo avere qualche abilità di agire senza pensare, è necessario in come funziono generalmente, ma soprattutto in come imparo. Devo avere istinti. Quindi mi tratterò per un po’, ascolterò, e mi rilasserò. So che se lo faccio, tutto il resto verrà facilmente e anche velocemente. E come se fossi troppo emozionata, adesso c’è troppo desiderio, troppo voglia, ma ci sta. Non vedo l’ora di parlare spagnolo.
A presto ;).
14:03:16
I think I'm feeling so excited because I can tell I'll be speaking it very soon. Even just knowing my process, I pretty much start communicating and speaking it [a language] the day I feel like doing it. There's nothing stopping me. It's already done. It's already guaranteed. The success of assurance and the assurance of guaranteed success. I could wake up tomorrow and spend the day speaking Spanish just because I decide to and I love that. It excites me. I won't because my priority will be my hair, but it's that knowing that I could. It's that knowing that babe, it's already done. You're speaking Spanish. I'm very much looking forward to this.
14:06:20
Tus sueños son posibles para ti.
La mia prima frase in spagnolo. 19:54:58.
Questo is going to be good. Benissimo.
20:07:18
You know what's crazy about this— I can watch some of my favourites movies [finally] in their original language, because half of the "Italian" movies [and shows] I was watching were Spanish-language movies dubbed in Italian. I'm so excited.
Isabella Huber
I organized a list with the 1000 most frequently used spanish words (including an anki deck with audio). Hope you like it.
by u/neribr2 in Spanish
Neri