So you are about to apply yourself to learning the basics of a different tongue. Embarrassment and frustration lie ahead; drills, repetition, and the infinite boredom of conjugation await you, and the prospect of mangling words that sit like rocks in your mouth. You'll stumble and make a fool of yourself for a while, and then, should you persevere, a door will open and you'll find yourself in a language that is to the rippling subtleties of English like the broad altiplano of the Andes; majestic, sonorous and true.
To gain a language is to gain a world, but to acquire a foreign tongue is also to gain a different way of being, and to change: even as you are repeating mindless exercise phrases like ¿Dónde está la corbata de mi tío? you will doubtless sit a little taller, thrust your chest out more, lift your chin and inquire about the location of your uncle's tie with a certain grandeur worthy of the language you are speaking. First you imitate the mindset of the language you are struggling to learn, then you inhabit it, and finally it inhabits you, and you are more than you once were.
Brought up in the Spanish of raucous marketplaces, solemn devotionals, and soul-shattering song – the Spanish of my native Mexico – I wound up spending part of my childhood in Los Angeles. I remember being offended by the idea that words in English were ungendered. Of course it was el sol, a fiery male being, and la luna, a beautiful silvery lady! Unsexed words were lifeless things I did not care for, and even the weird names of the letters of the alphabet – not ah but ey, not beh but bee – made me feel rebellious. And then the door unlocked and I stepped in, away from the sonorous realms of Spanish and into the sinuous emotions of English, feeling no longer emocionada but "cool". A mountain of books later I ended up a grateful subject of the English language, rejoicing in its effortless swing and jive.
When the Sandinista insurrection in Nicaragua erupted in 1979, I was desperate to put myself on a plane to Managua to see the revolution first hand and ended up reporting on the fight against the dictator Anastasio Somoza for the Guardian. Translating the terrible stories into something that made sense to readers in, say, Manchester – with its general absence of backyards with mango trees, and abundance of regularly scheduled elections in the course of which no one died – taught me some basic lessons on the differences between the two languages. Spanish is a language full of urgent matters, too urgent to leave much room for irony. English, on the other hand, is a language that does not deal well with strong, unambivalent emotions. In English, it is hard to believe in heroes. In Spanish, it is sometimes hard to imagine that a hero could have faults. In terms of wit and culture, the people I wrote for were vastly more sophisticated than the Spanish speakers I wrote about, who lived generally far below the poverty line. In terms of life experience and the ability to laugh full-heartedly, the English speakers were babes in arms.
To learn a language is to become a collector. As you make your way through the grammar and the pronunciation you will also pick up words, polish them, turn them over and over until they sit in your hand like smoothly polished stones. Since you are learning Latin American Spanish you will soon discover that, unlike English, which is full of words that can be dissonant, guttural, or yowling, in Spanish every word is beautiful. Take, for example, the word for "stone" in Spanish: piedra, a beautiful word I offer you as the first one in your collection. May you add many more, and build a road to a new world with them.
Alma Guillermoprieto is a Mexican reporter and writer. She writes regularly for the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and National Geographic