How to learn to speak Argentinean
Soy un perdedor. I’m a loser baby.— Beck
November 2009. Copán Ruinas, Honduras.
In the dimly lit back service area of a hotel in the middle of the jungle, I was losing a heated argument. This was not a position I wanted to be in, however I had been accused of stealing from The Man, and was desperately trying to plead my case.
The Man was Don Udo, the owner of a decent-but-unspectacular hotel I had been staying at for the past several days. Out of respect, he had sent two of his best for me — two housekeepers.
The shakedown occurred when I was approached by one of them upon checking out.
“I cannot find the remote control for the television,” she told me in Spanish. She spoke no English. My Spanish being only that which I had learned 15 years prior and not yet forgotten, I only heard ‘no television’, and then followed her beckoning me back to the room I had just vacated.
The television was still definitely where I had left it. Quickly it became apparent that she was referring to the remote control.
“It was here,” I told her in Spanish, pointing to the bed. She said some more that I did not understand. I shrugged my shoulders, telling her again that it had been left on the bed. She became flustered and beckoned for me to follow her once again.
It was with trepidation that I did so, following her through the back hallways of the hotel to where the boss housekeeper stood waiting. They began peppering me with things I did not understand. What I did understand was that they were asking for money to replace the lost remote.
“No, no, it was on the bed,” I insisted again. They continued to assault me with Spanish, none of which I heard as my mind was spinning, trying to think of some other Spanish that I knew other than ‘I left it on the bed’. I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head.
“No soy un perdedor!” At this they stopped their assault, apparently stunned at my grasp of the language in firmly telling them that I did not lose their remote control. I used their stunned silence as an opening to escape down the hallway, making a beeline for my car and telling Katie that we had to leave immediately.
Only later in retrospect when I realised what I had actually said did it become clear why it had caught the two housekeepers off guard, aiding in my escape from Don Udo’s.
I was dangerous with my 15-year old Spanish.
January 2019. Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I’m even more dangerous with 24-year old Spanish. That didn’t stop me from being appointed official translator for the 2019 Naughton expedition to South America.
Desperate digging in the depths of my brain ensued, for any leftovers from Señora Bruggeman’s 1993 Spanish classes. Unfortunately the strongest memories were of Señora’s flowing black hair and the times she dressed up and danced flamenco, and that my Spanish name was Nacho, none of which would help me navigate Argentina and beyond.
Of course my family relies on me for a lot of things, but this seemed different, and pressure that I was not relishing. I like speaking Spanish, but here I was being called upon for essentially everything which required interaction with the outside world: ordering food, asking for directions, or trying and explain to the fix-it man that our sink is leaking all over the place.
It made me worried, uncomfortable, like being appointed to a position you know you aren’t qualified for. Argentina did not make things easier by providing more English speakers, which would have been appreciated. However after leaving the Buenos Aires airport, Inglés has not been widespread.
Unfortunately early experiences did little to help to boost my confidence.
Levandería Cerrano is run by an ancient woman with white hair and an apron. You could imagine her running her house the same way she runs the laundry, by efficiently and confidently puttering around amongst the organised clutter. The son who helps out around the place says nary a word while folding clothes and moving them from one spot of the dim room to another. Mom is clearly in charge and put up with us despite speaking no English and my laundry terminology being limited.
Most laundries in Palermo are of the variety where you drop off your dirties and pick them up clean and folded, which on the surface sounds great especially when it is generally pretty cheap. Horror stories abound on the internet, however, about lost (or stolen) items, shrunken and damaged goods. Señora Cerrano has two machines that you can use to wash your own clothes for $3.50 a load, and an uncomfortable park bench to sit on while waiting for them to finish.
She showed us how to load the machine, threw a token into it, then started explaining the soap dispenser. We had already purchased laundry soap, and I did not want to be charged extra for it.
“No no, yo tengo sopa,” I told her. “No, I have soup.” She laughed and said something I assume dismissed me as a silly Yanki, and waved me away.
Luckily she let us continue to come back, probably for the entertainment value.
While the rest of the family thought this hilarious, incidents like the soup laundry ruffled my confidence and made me wish for someone else to magically learn Spanish in a hurry.
We started Spanish language school a week after arriving in BsAs, and it helped shake off some of the dust. I think Katie picked up the most, and has since totally smashed the rest of us in Duolingo. But she gets flustered when trying to speak to someone. Oscar and Henry started from close to zero, so while they’ve picked some up they’re still hitting the basics. Oscar’s been very consciously picking up on his surroundings, and reminds me somewhat of a kid first learning to read who sees words all around and wants to know what they are.
“What does disponible mean?” he asked when passing yet another empty billboard.
“Available,” I tell him. Useful things like that.
But still, it’s been mostly left to me.
Argentina speaks many languages. There’s the distinctly Argentinean Spanish we’ve been battling with. There’s fútbol, the beautiful game, that drives the country wild.
And there’s tango.
I did not know much about tango when coming to Argentina. Many people take the opportunity to learn it (as much as one can in a couple of tourist lessons) when coming here, similar to how we went to Spanish language school. While I thought the idea of learning tango intriguing despite a well documented past record of dancing failures, our boys Henry and Oscar weren’t having any of it.
“No way.” Henry replied flatly.
“I don’t want to learn to tango.” Oscar said, grimacing.
Their opinions taken into account, we considered our options. As good and responsible parents, we often have to make decisions to throw our children into things to help them develop more informed opinions. Which is a nice way of saying that one steamy Monday night we decided to drag the boys to a milonga to watch some tango.
Very simply put, a milonga is an organised event where people go to dance tango. In central BsAs and neighbourhoods like San Telmo, milongas are often held at cafes or restaurants and spruiked as tourist activities. We found one located in the barrio next door to us in Belgrano, at a park pavilion called La Glorieta.
We spread a couple of towels on a grassy area not too far away from the pavilion where 20 people were receiving a lesson. The boys were kept occupied for the time being with odd foreign canned drinks apparently from Antarctica.
Once the sun began to set, the real dancing started.
Dancers trickled in over the course of an hour, some with partners, some not, and La Glorieta slowly filled with people dancing and the park filled with music. They were people of all sizes, shapes, colours and ages. There was no fancy dress code or need to wear high heels for this dance.
Tango’s a mesmerising thing to watch. It’s very intricate, a slow and intimate spinning discussion between the partners. The dance is between two people, with the lead dictating what happens, but also responding to the feel from their partner. Each pair also has to move within the confines of the space and weave within the other dancing pairs, all while staying completely engrossed in the embrace of your partner. There are written and unwritten rules for everything from which direction to move around to codes of conduct for finding your partner for the next set.
Tango takes a lifetime to learn. But somehow after we sat quietly amongst other people from the neighbourhood at La Glorieta that Monday night, watching the dancers moving as the music lilted toward us through the summer humidity, we understood.
When things began to slow down, and we were all worn out from the sticky heat which made us feel as though we’d been dancing for hours even though we’d just been imagining it in our minds, we found our bus and headed home.
On the way, I asked the boys if they’d changed their minds and would like to learn tango. To me, from a rear view mirror through which I could see missed opportunities long passed, it was a no-brainer. For two guys on the cusp of their teen years, a little tango could pay huge dividends in the future.
“No way.” Henry replied flatly.
“I don’t want to learn the tango.” Oscar replied, grimacing. “Too much touchy touchy stuff.”
Someday they’ll learn.
Thanks for reading! This is Part 8 of my series of stories about quitting my job and travelling for a year with my family. If you’ve not read the others, please do! You can find the first one here.
A couple more things:
I love Beck. Here’s a link to a crappy YouTube bootleg of the video for Loser with Spanish subtitles. So if you’ve ever wanted to know how to say ‘Get crazy with the Cheez Whiz’ in Spanish, this is your chance.
You can check out a great article from La Nacíon, one of the main Argentine newspapers, about the milonga at La Glorieta. You’ll want to use google translate.
Finally, if you liked what I wrote, please give me as many claps as you’re digitally allowed and can honestly justify — I appreciate it!
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