Spanglish Language Exchange

If you’re a foreigner in Buenos Aires you’ve heard of Spanglish. It is an English-Spanish exchange/intercambio. It works like kind of like speed dating. Well I’ve never been to speed dating but that’s what the flyer says. There are about ten or twelve tables and you switch around every ten minutes. For the first five minutes you speak in Spanish and the second you speak in English. It’s not as simple as the flashy website and flyer make out, but there is a free drink.

My Spanish was terrible so as you can imagine I was dreading my first encounter. It was a lovely man from Chile. He was very helpful and corrected me when necessary and really helped me along. That was for about three minutes. Then two other people sat down at the table. First was a guy from Montana - he didn’t know what language they spoke in Ireland (English). The second was a girl from Sweden who asked if I spoke any other languages- I said a little bit of German and some Irish. She informed me that she thought the Irish language was just English spoken with and accent. She was quite shocked to hear it has different words and everything. It truly turned out to be a cultural exchange.

Aside from being quite, shall me say, misinformed the two of them were excellent at Spanish. And of course they had only taken one week of lessons. I don’t believe that for a second, unless the ridiculous amount of money that language schools here charge goes towards some kind of newly discovered Spanish language implant chip.

The next few experiences were just as daunting and very exhausting. All in all I got mistaken for an English person, made a joke about cultural imperialism that fell flat and learned probably about two new Spanish words.

That is the problem with Spanglish. Unless you are an overconfident genius, if you are a beginner things just overwhelm you. Not to mention that it ends up being like an job interview or on some terrible occasions vigorous questioning by a local about why you are in Argentina. ‘I thought it seemed like a nice place’ is met with rolling eyes and an end to the conversation.

Spanglish summed up in one word-awkward.