Language(s) in (Southern) Mexico
Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2023 6:47 am
Time for another language-based travelogue in the same style as my previous ones. This time, for a change of pace, I did not go to East Asia, but instead stayed in my home continent of North America. I went to Mexico for the first time!
I spent five days in Oaxaca, four in Puerto Escondido, and one on a bus. I traveled once again with the same intrepid travel partner from my Laos trip - this marks the 13th country we've traveled to together! I've always been curious to hear them speak Spanish, as they studied to the AP level in high school and grew up going to Mexico for family reunions several times but never spoke it at home. Once in Mongolia I was negotiating a car ride price in Russian and Chinese and another driver came over and started speaking Spanish. My mind went blank but my friend came to the rescue (though we ended up going with a third driver who spoke English and several more languages better than I did).
Anyway, in preparation for this trip I put my Greek on hold and practiced a lot of Spanish with Glossika, Easy Spanish videos, and grammar books. This was, after all, the first time I'd ever gone to a Spanish-speaking country. The best my Spanish ever got before was when I was living in Monterey and regularly used Spanish at grocery stores and restaurants as well as for work, even giving a few less-than-fluent presentations from time to time to very patient clients in the agriculture industry. Spanish is also the first language I started formally learning, back in 2009 in high school. With all that time learning, living in California, plus listening to Spanish radio a lot when driving over the years, I have pretty strong comprehension.
I got to Mexico City early in the morning to change planes to Oaxaca and was immediately surprised by how much Spanish I had to use. I was addressed in Spanish by everyone and rose to the task, only asking for clarification in English once about the directions to the next gate. I didn't speak English at all until I got to the hotel in Oaxaca and met up with my friend, who had arrived the day before.
From a Spanish practice point of view, Oaxaca is incredible. I noticed several times that people of all ages spoke slowly and clearly to us on purpose when we were having trouble, always patient and never condescendingly. This included a long and in-depth conversation in a restaurant about the particulars of different types of mole and mezcal, two local specialties, where the waiter expertly adjusted his speech to keep the conversation flowing even during points where all I could do to contribute was nod my head knowingly and say "Sí." The reaction to my use of Spanish was never negative and that gave me the encouragement to ask about all kinds of things and strike up plenty of tiny conversations. "What does the name of this restaurant mean? Has this area changed a lot in the last few years? Who's this politician I keep seeing campaign posters for?"
Puerto Escondido was actually similar even though there were many times more foreign tourists. There, we had our only experience of someone not adjusting their speech for us (a surly hotel front desk attendant) but otherwise we were able to speak Spanish at our own pace with plenty of restaurant and food stall owners. My travel partner remarked that some of the conversations even seemed like they were out of a beginner's textbook: "What's the difference between these two dishes?" "This one has meat and this one does not have meat." "No meat?" "Yes. No meat. Only vegetables."
My friend and I walked from Monte Alban to the Oaxaca old town, a trek of about two hours through mountainside villages no tourist would have any reason to go to. That was the only place someone greeted us with "Hello! How are you!" the same way people did when we were out of place in China. That area (as well as the area where we were staying) reminded me irresistibly of Indonesia in the way the streets and houses were laid out, even down to the fonts and designs used on signboards. That feeling never left during the whole trip. In fact I even had Indonesian slip out once when I said boleh? to a waiter. Luckily it was understood as ¿vale?, which means about the same thing.
Nobody local complimented us on our Spanish, just taking it for granted that we would try to speak it. Indeed, the vast majority of foreign tourists I saw all had fair to excellent Spanish. A large number of the tourists I overheard were French or German. I suppose Americans mostly go to Cancun or Baja California - though of course my sample size is small. The only person to compliment me was a Spaniard at the same hotel, and that was near the end of the trip when I was plenty warmed up and used to switching to Spanish.
By the end of our trip we were both more fluent than at the beginning, though we were both constantly making noticeable simple errors of agreement and tense. We could both hear ourselves making these errors, but whatever engine running the grammar software in our minds was too slow to keep up with the output speed demanded by our mouths. My friend surprised me with some of the vocabulary they knew and I didn't, like the word for the tiny shops on street corners, misceláneas. I know that comes from having just been in the country before, since that's exactly the type of word I would have had to look up specifically when learning from videos and yet see a dozen times a day when walking around.
Of course, Oaxaca is known for its large Indigenous population. I kept my ears wide for snatches of conversation in any local languages, but to my shock I never heard any. (Right when I arrived in the airport I thought I did, but it turned out to be something Slavic). At Monte Alban and in a few places around the city of Oaxaca, there were signs in local languages, mostly Zapotec. There were a few kids' books in local languages at the library we visited too. I'm just now kicking myself for not asking the librarian about this topic! The local accent of Spanish was incredibly easy to understand and identical in every way to the Spanish I grew up studying. They say "chico" instead of "pequeño" for "small" there, as well as a few other small differences in vocabulary. I also only heard "usted" a few times and otherwise exclusively used informal conjugations. Perhaps these differences are Mexico-wide and I just don't know them from lack of exposure to idiomatic Mexican Spanish.
Even though I've been back a few days, I talked to myself in Spanish for a little while today while driving and was happy it came out so easily. It's a great feeling to have finally needed and used my Spanish for an excellent vacation!
I spent five days in Oaxaca, four in Puerto Escondido, and one on a bus. I traveled once again with the same intrepid travel partner from my Laos trip - this marks the 13th country we've traveled to together! I've always been curious to hear them speak Spanish, as they studied to the AP level in high school and grew up going to Mexico for family reunions several times but never spoke it at home. Once in Mongolia I was negotiating a car ride price in Russian and Chinese and another driver came over and started speaking Spanish. My mind went blank but my friend came to the rescue (though we ended up going with a third driver who spoke English and several more languages better than I did).
Anyway, in preparation for this trip I put my Greek on hold and practiced a lot of Spanish with Glossika, Easy Spanish videos, and grammar books. This was, after all, the first time I'd ever gone to a Spanish-speaking country. The best my Spanish ever got before was when I was living in Monterey and regularly used Spanish at grocery stores and restaurants as well as for work, even giving a few less-than-fluent presentations from time to time to very patient clients in the agriculture industry. Spanish is also the first language I started formally learning, back in 2009 in high school. With all that time learning, living in California, plus listening to Spanish radio a lot when driving over the years, I have pretty strong comprehension.
I got to Mexico City early in the morning to change planes to Oaxaca and was immediately surprised by how much Spanish I had to use. I was addressed in Spanish by everyone and rose to the task, only asking for clarification in English once about the directions to the next gate. I didn't speak English at all until I got to the hotel in Oaxaca and met up with my friend, who had arrived the day before.
From a Spanish practice point of view, Oaxaca is incredible. I noticed several times that people of all ages spoke slowly and clearly to us on purpose when we were having trouble, always patient and never condescendingly. This included a long and in-depth conversation in a restaurant about the particulars of different types of mole and mezcal, two local specialties, where the waiter expertly adjusted his speech to keep the conversation flowing even during points where all I could do to contribute was nod my head knowingly and say "Sí." The reaction to my use of Spanish was never negative and that gave me the encouragement to ask about all kinds of things and strike up plenty of tiny conversations. "What does the name of this restaurant mean? Has this area changed a lot in the last few years? Who's this politician I keep seeing campaign posters for?"
Puerto Escondido was actually similar even though there were many times more foreign tourists. There, we had our only experience of someone not adjusting their speech for us (a surly hotel front desk attendant) but otherwise we were able to speak Spanish at our own pace with plenty of restaurant and food stall owners. My travel partner remarked that some of the conversations even seemed like they were out of a beginner's textbook: "What's the difference between these two dishes?" "This one has meat and this one does not have meat." "No meat?" "Yes. No meat. Only vegetables."
My friend and I walked from Monte Alban to the Oaxaca old town, a trek of about two hours through mountainside villages no tourist would have any reason to go to. That was the only place someone greeted us with "Hello! How are you!" the same way people did when we were out of place in China. That area (as well as the area where we were staying) reminded me irresistibly of Indonesia in the way the streets and houses were laid out, even down to the fonts and designs used on signboards. That feeling never left during the whole trip. In fact I even had Indonesian slip out once when I said boleh? to a waiter. Luckily it was understood as ¿vale?, which means about the same thing.
Nobody local complimented us on our Spanish, just taking it for granted that we would try to speak it. Indeed, the vast majority of foreign tourists I saw all had fair to excellent Spanish. A large number of the tourists I overheard were French or German. I suppose Americans mostly go to Cancun or Baja California - though of course my sample size is small. The only person to compliment me was a Spaniard at the same hotel, and that was near the end of the trip when I was plenty warmed up and used to switching to Spanish.
By the end of our trip we were both more fluent than at the beginning, though we were both constantly making noticeable simple errors of agreement and tense. We could both hear ourselves making these errors, but whatever engine running the grammar software in our minds was too slow to keep up with the output speed demanded by our mouths. My friend surprised me with some of the vocabulary they knew and I didn't, like the word for the tiny shops on street corners, misceláneas. I know that comes from having just been in the country before, since that's exactly the type of word I would have had to look up specifically when learning from videos and yet see a dozen times a day when walking around.
Of course, Oaxaca is known for its large Indigenous population. I kept my ears wide for snatches of conversation in any local languages, but to my shock I never heard any. (Right when I arrived in the airport I thought I did, but it turned out to be something Slavic). At Monte Alban and in a few places around the city of Oaxaca, there were signs in local languages, mostly Zapotec. There were a few kids' books in local languages at the library we visited too. I'm just now kicking myself for not asking the librarian about this topic! The local accent of Spanish was incredibly easy to understand and identical in every way to the Spanish I grew up studying. They say "chico" instead of "pequeño" for "small" there, as well as a few other small differences in vocabulary. I also only heard "usted" a few times and otherwise exclusively used informal conjugations. Perhaps these differences are Mexico-wide and I just don't know them from lack of exposure to idiomatic Mexican Spanish.
Even though I've been back a few days, I talked to myself in Spanish for a little while today while driving and was happy it came out so easily. It's a great feeling to have finally needed and used my Spanish for an excellent vacation!