Terrible, terrible Spanish

Because I'm trying to write more, I'm posting stuff that's not perfect, or perhaps, even done. Because that's the way blogging works. Right? Right.

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Mas o menos, that's what I say about my Spanish. I have also called it interpretive dance. And it's true - it's rather awful, and I probably end up saying as much with my hands as with my voice. For a while, I only knew three verbs, and I only know how to conjugate them in the present tense. This leads to complicated questions like: "In your life, you has allergies on medications?". Or the more lyrical, "The pain, it starts when and where, the pain?" I'm not proud of my poor Spanish.

OK, actually, I am.

Because my only formal teaching in Spanish dates from high school, during one semester in which my name was "Pilar" (I still don't know why). And the rest of my Spanish comes from my patients. I ask, Como se dice, about IVs and incisions and body parts, and I try to remember what they've taught me. I give myself an E for effort - I think/guess/hope i get credit for the trying.

And this has meant that I can usually get by. I really try not to do important, legal things (like get consent for surgery) with my terrible Spanish, and I'll get an interpreter for complicated stuff, but I've been the translator in the middle of the night or for a really emergent emergency (yes, there are levels of emergency in OB; no, this is not an official term) more times than I can count.

This is all ok - or relatively ok - as long as I'm the one talking. I can choose the speed, and the vocabulary. But then, the trouble starts. Because when the patient asks a question, wow. That's a whole different Spanish.

My least favorite part of my whole translation experience is when the patient doesn't understand, and the family member says the EXACT SAME THING I just said in Spanish, and the patient then nods sagely. Ooh, that just shivers my timbers.

And the truth is, a large number of my patients who "prefer Spanish" actually speak, or at least understand, a reasonable amount of English. These women and their self-consciousness? fear? whatever it is that makes it hard for them to use even the meager tools at their disposal make me sad.

When they do this, I joke: Oh, you just wanted me to work harder! And sometimes I get a shy smile.

I'm still glad I try.