On Flirting and Foreign Language
No shortcuts for either
I am terrible at flirting.
This is how it usually goes down: I see an attractive man. I look away immediately, and continue not looking at or engaging with said attractive man.
Or, I make a failed attempt at confidence, look him square in the eye, and promptly forget how talking works. We make some prolonged eye contact, but definitely no conversation. I probably never see him again.
This sends some mixed messages, I think. But, that’s my whole bag of flirting tricks: ignore or stare silently through the awkwardness. Neither have really been working for me as evidenced by my still being single.
Here’s the ironic thing: I’m actually really good at flirting, but only when I don’t mean to. If I’m not attracted to a person, I can feel free to just act like myself around them.
I am an extremely affectionate person. I love encouraging people, and having intense one-on-one conversations.
So, when I am definitely not flirting with someone, I will touch them a lot, compliment them, and pull them aside for some intimate conversation. This is also rather misleading, and has, on multiple occasions, gotten me into some awkward situations.
I know what you’re thinking. I can’t just reverse the two. It’s impossible.
Another thing I can’t do is speak any other languages fluently. I did pretty well in high school Spanish. But, that was more than a decade ago.
I studied abroad in Italy in college, but it was with an art program, not a language program.
All the Italian I know, I learned from the ladies at the gelateria. I learned how to greet them, tell them how many scoops of gelato I wanted, and thank them on my way out the door. But, honestly “Ciao! Due. Grazie.” doesn’t really do me any good outside that very specific situation.
I mean, I guess it could work for pizza too, but I’m not adding Italian to my résumé over it.
When I was teaching in Botswana, I learned enough Setswana to get around. I can make small talk in the present tense, ask for directions, order lunch, and tell a classroom full of children to be quiet and listen. There aren’t many opportunities for practicing outside of that corner of the world. The most I’ve gotten out of it recently is an annoying habit of forcing vocabulary lessons on friends.
My former roommates all know how to say “let’s go” in Setswana now, because I wrote it on the house whiteboard next to the front door, and said it to them every time we left the house.
I’ve forgotten a lot of the Setswana I knew, but I do know enough for the words to mix into my speech every time I try to speak Spanish, and for the hard clicking consonants and pronunciation rules of Setswana to distort my Spanish accent.
People are much more patient with you when they know you are speaking in your second language, but, let me assure you, no amount of patience will allow speakers of either language to understand when you speak to them in Setspañol.
I have been getting pretty annoyed with my decaying language skills lately, so I decided to take a free online Spanish class. The website I chose allowed me the option of doing a bonus lesson for reaching a certain level.
There were two available lessons: idioms and flirting. I obviously chose flirting. Who chooses idioms?
I saw it as an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. I could learn some extra Spanish, and maybe gain some insight into the mystery of flirting. I eagerly got to work.
I opened my lesson to find these phrases among others:
“Are you a model?”
“Are you lost? Heaven is very far from here.”
“I’m not drunk, I’m just intoxicated by you.”
“Your house or mine?”
This is how I learned my language teaching website is also a sleazy pickup artist.
So, my plan failed. I guess that’s what you get for putting your self-improvement goals in the hands of a free online Spanish class’ bonus lesson.
Now, I’m bad at flirting in English, super creepy in Spanish, and definitely still single in every language.
If you are looking for language partners to improve your foreign language skills you can find it on swaplanguage.com.
