Two Language Vignettes from Our Time in Valencia

I loved our week in Valencia for a variety of reasons, one of which was because I got to spend a chunk of time speaking Spanish. ❤️ There were times I was lost for the right words and I know I made grammatical mistakes here and there, but I was able to hold my own and it was so fun. Here are two stories I wanted to document before I forget them.

Story/Vignette 1: The Metro Card

We were walking into the metro station and needed to refill our 10-pass. There was a man there who told us he was leaving for Italy and did we want his leftover card? I understood the gist of what he was saying but I didn’t quite catch it all. Also, he mentioned a TUIN card, which I had read about when I was researching metro cards for Valencia, but I didn’t remember what it was and was trying to work out whether we could use it. He asked me again since I hadn’t responded, showing me the value left on the card. It was almost 4 Euro. Ok, I told him, I’ll take it.

He held his hand out and my sister said, he wants 3 Euro for it. Oooooooh, got it! I knew I had missed something in the “conversation.” I took out some coins, we made the exchange and he headed off. That’s when Nancy said, “You do realize he was speaking to you in Italian, right?” Um, what? No. Italian? Really? She said it was the numbers that gave it away for her; the monetary values he gave were clearly in Italian.

I just laughed. I hadn’t been expecting Italian in Spain and so my brain had processed everything as Spanish; I assumed it was the local accent/dialect that had made it a bit tricky for me to understand. Nope! I had a mostly mutually intelligible conversation involving two different languages with both of us speaking a different one! I guess I understand more Italian than I realized?

Story/Vignette 2:

We were out one afternoon and popped into a restaurant because: hungry child. We ordered several dishes and some sangria using a mixture of English and Spanish. At one point, the young woman waiting on us looked at me and said, “Your Spanish sounds very Latin American.” I laughed. “I have a Mexican accent,” I said, “but I’m pura gringa, Estadounidense.” She regarded me. “And your husband? Where is he from?” I got a kick out of her thinking that surely there had to have been a deeper explanation for a gringa in Spain speaking Mexican Spanish. A part of me giggled and thought: I’ve still got it! I may have learned Spanish 27 years ago, but it’s still in there. 😉

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Learning another language (and actually being able to converse in it) remains one of my prouder achievements. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea (or pitcher of sangria), but it’s so gratifying for me. What’s something you’re still proud of having accomplished, even if it was a while ago?