You need to pop your Spanish Bubble!
Maybe you’ve been living in Canada for a long time. You’ve been trying and working so hard to fit in to your new home here in Canada, but it seems to slow.
Many of the people that I know who live here around me are from Latin America. They tell me that they’ve studied English back in their home country, and that they had built a good English foundation or so they thought, but when they arrived here, it just felt like they got stuck.
One of my really good friends shared something with me that just resonated so deeply. He said,
I feel like I have two personalities: my Spanish personality, where I feel like I am truly me, and my English personality which feels totally awkward and shy.
In Spanish, I can say everything that I want to say. I can tell great jokes. I have things in my mind, and I can freely express them. I’m outgoing, but when I try to use English, I feel like this other personality takes over and I suddenly become shy. I don’t feel like I can say what I really want to say, and that’s so frustrating for me. I just feel stuck.“
Is that how you feel today? Do you feel like you have two personalities, a Spanish personality, where you’re fully you and an English personality where you feel like a version of yourself that’s not really you?
That’s so frustrating, isn’t it? And I totally get how that feels because it totally happened to me! I lived in Mexico City for 16 years, but I went without any Spanish. I didn’t take any Spanish classes here in Canada before I left. I had to learn it while living there through going through the experience of being immersed in the language, being immersed in the culture. I had to learn, or I couldn’t make my life work.
But, you know, something? I discovered that I was doing something that was working against me, and I am betting that maybe you are doing it to yourself, too.
When I was in Mexico, I slowly built around myself a bubble. This bubble was something that I couldn’t see, and it wasn’t something that I thought about creating beforehand, but it’s something that I did: I surrounded myself with English.
I had friends who were fully fluent in Spanish and in English. My girlfriend who I met there in Mexico, she was fully fluent in Spanish and in English, which is how we first met. (Thankfully, she later became my wife!) Even the TV shows and movies that I watched, all of it was in English. And to make matters worse, my work was also in English. I was an English teacher!
Every day, the language I spent the most time using was, you guessed it, English. I had built an English bubble around me. And the only times I really had to use my minimal Spanish skills, was when I had to get on a bus or go to the grocery store or have very simple interactions with people. So, I didn’t get to practice it very much.
The result: my Spanish didn’t improve, at least not as fast as I wanted it to until I started to notice my bubble.
And so that’s what I want to ask you about today. Do you think that maybe you have built a Spanish bubble around you?
If you have, I totally get why! That bubble is there to help you feel safe. It’s to help you feel like you’re not so alone. It’s to help you not miss your family and your friends, and your culture as much.
I totally get that because that’s why I built my English bubble. It’s like a survival mechanism and for a while, it serves a purpose. It does help. But there comes a point where that Spanish bubble that you have around you starts to work against you. It starts to hold you back.
My friend, I think a big reason why you are feeling frustrated with your slow English progress is because of that Spanish bubble you have around you! It is keeping you from making the progress that you need to be making in English.
So, what do you think? Am I describing your situation a little with this post? If, if you looked around in your life today, what percentage of it is in Spanish and what percentage of it is in English?
If you look carefully, I’m willing to bet that you are struggling with a Spanish bubble!
In the next few posts, I’ll be sharing some ways you can begin working to pop that bubble so you can begin moving forward with your English again.
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