Nepali Wanderer

When I started watching Hollywood movies, I immediately branched out into foreign films as well. Since I was never into sci-fi, action, or superhero movies, I guess I naturally gravitated toward dramas from different parts of the world. In my selected list of acclaimed foreign movies, most were Spanish or Italian. The more I watched Spanish movies (both from Spain and Latin America), the more fascinated I became with the culture and language. So, if I ever had to learn a language, I knew it’d be Spanish.

 As fate would have it, when I was applying to colleges in Florida and Barcelona, I decided to join a Spanish class in Nepal. While I did learn (more like memorised) a few Spanish phrases and basic conjugation (everything in the present tense, obviously), I was too occupied with other things at the time. (My all-time reality and excuse.) Plus, I’ve always had this attitude of “I will learn when I need to.”

Needless to say, when I landed in Barcelona for my studies, I was casually confident about learning Spanish. Except one week into college, I knew it would be my last priority. With so much new and diverse stuff (from arcane mathematics to computing) to learn, and homework and projects piling up, learning one more thing was out of the question. Plus, I had two other factors pushing my ‘let’s give up on Spanish’ decision: First, my college was mostly composed of international students and professors, so Spanish wasn’t used anywhere. Second, the outside world spoke Catalan too, a different language. (Funnily, some of the Statistics lectures already felt like Greek lessons, with esoteric Greek symbols on the board.)

So, that was my story—learning and then forgetting Spanish during my stay there. When I returned home, my journey of learning Spanish seemingly ended. Then I had my first moment of reflection, interestingly tied to my childhood fascination again (Spanish content, this time on Netflix.) I remember watching “Narcos” and understanding a little Spanish, which made me feel both good and bad. Good realising how much effort someone would require to just learn that bit, and bad because I had let my budding skills fade.

Then in 2020, another turning point happened. I decided to deactivate all my social media. The ideal plan was to focus on other aspects of life (reading books, writing more, etc.). But you know how addictive phones can be—the constant urge to open some app. With my phone seemingly empty, I thought of downloading something, with that something soon becoming Duolingo. Maybe it would be my closest social media escape.

By the time I installed Duolingo, the COVID lockdown happened. And you know how it was back then. I started “playing” on Duolingo, refreshing the basics I once knew. One day, I got a dopamine hit — 50-day streak notification. I was so casual with initial learning that I hadn’t noticed the streak building up. This surprising realisation of being consistent gave me a feeling of accomplishment. I also experienced the reward of small habits building up. The 50 days became 590-something, followed by another 500-day streak, broken both times because of Vipassana 10-day meditation. Apart from practicing Spanish, this experience taught me the value of consistency and gave me the belief that I can stick to something long-term.

As I continued my Duolingo journey, I started adding more mediums for learning Spanish. This meant watching Spanish content on Netflix, adding Spanish subtitles to Hindi/English movies, and jumping into random Spanish telenovelas on YouTube. Looking back, it has been more than 1,500 days since I started this journey. What has been tangible and profoundly impactful is my learning beyond Spanish. As I reflect on this journey, I want to highlight some of my key learnings that go beyond just the language.

One aspect that fueled my initial journey was the cross-connection with other disciplines. As I was mostly reading history-related books in parallel, the lesson on Proto-Indo-European theory (about how most European and Indian subcontinent languages have the same origin) caught my attention regarding Spanish similarities. I started connecting words across Nepali/Hindi and Spanish, two languages I had never imagined as close. Be it the numbers (Uno, dos, tres… diez to Ek, Du, Teen… Das) or basic words (Kameez/Camisa for shirt), I found it fascinating to compare languages. I also learned an important aspect of Hindi that I had never noticed (despite consuming and speaking it for years). I knew Spanish has gender for non-living things (like fire being masculine, water being feminine), unlike Nepali or English. But I never knew Hindi has the same gender concept. My friends in India would laugh at my “tha-thi” mistake, without ever telling me why. (I finally noticed this usage in many movie dialogues, like “Dard tha,” “Mohabbat thi”— guess the movie, by the way!) This was a great discovery for me, not only for learning Hindi but also for understanding how learning in one area can aid in another.

Another important learning has been understanding my own learning style. Most of us learn languages naturally as kids, without realising how we learn. Discovering how we learn is crucial as learning is a transferable skill useful throughout life. Learning a new language as an adult provides insights into this process. Of course, you can do this learning other skills too, like learning a musical instrument, computer programming, etc. There are Neuroscience studies about language learning being beneficial for our brain, the neurological benefit of being multilingual etc, but these are general learnings rather than my own. I want to base this story on my own experience, and so I can only vouch how learning Spanish has made me excited about learning other new skills.

Interestingly, learning Spanish has also improved my English. Initially, I worried about my English while learning Spanish grammar (that urge to add “mas” to everything, like “more fast” in line with Spanish “más rápido”). But language is much more than grammar, and vocabulary plays a strong part. Learning Spanish has made me dissect random GRE words like “dolorous” etymologically after knowing “dolor” means pain in Spanish. Since many English words come from Latin, and Spanish is a Latin-origin language, knowing Spanish improves your English vocabulary. I even revisited “Word Power Made Easy” to learn the etymology of English words, and now I see English words differently. (I will write a separate article on this.)

But the biggest improvement I have seen in my English is in terms of confidence. I have always had issues with accent and pronunciation, with people picking out on my “pen/pain”, “sheep/ship” type mistake (which I still honestly do not get). Now that I realise how difficult it is to learn a new language, and how happy one would be just to be 80 percent right, I feel normal about speaking English the way I can. Almost as if my mind is internally saying, “Who cares about the perfect accent/pronunciation when you can speak multiple languages.” I have also learned to consciously speak English slower (which already improves your speaking by a huge margin) thanks to my slow Spanish-speaking habit.

Lastly, it’s the same fascination that first made me curious about Spanish—learning about new cultures and lifestyles. Learning Spanish has added a new dimension to my travel experiences and aspirations. One shortcoming for me has been the limited opportunity of speaking Spanish. So, I every time I travel, I make the most of my opportunity (like during my two recent US trips or my travels within Nepal where it’s easy to come across Spanish speakers). During my Everest Base Camp trek, I even succeeded in passing off as a Guatemalan to a Mexican group, with Nepali-Latin similar looks also helping the cause. I dream of someday living in South America, just to experience the life far away.

So, this is my journey of learning Spanish. It has been one transformative experience — right from building new habits to learning new skills to being open to the Universe.