Community EssaysBook CommentsMy Essays My Corrections

Write & Correct
English

Valeria.Fontes

Things that may hinder your foreign language speaking

Spanish has always been very easy to me because my dad used to listen to Latin American music, so I grew up acquainted with their phonetics, at least. I also started taking Flamenco and Salsa classes very early in life, what exposed me, once more, to music.
Besides that, I've already travelled to many Spanish speaking countries. There were a lot of college time texts in Spanish too, and the literarture I love. That's to say I believed to be fluent in that language. I could even adapt to Argentinian, Mexican, Cuban, Castillian!
When I was in my 30's, I got married with a Peruvian guy, and that was the end of my confidence. His family laughed at my accent and vocabulary choices, spoke local slang so I couldn't understand conversations. To put it in a nutshell, I was bullied.
I know I should have taken it as fun, but it made me lose my confidence. I can still get away with fluent conversations, as well as travel with no problematic episodes, but I'm not at all as self-assured as I used to be.

Posted

Comment(s)

ADMINISTRATOR
leosmith
While I agree that some people overestimate their levels, native Portuguese speakers tend to be pretty darn good at Spanish. Your husband's family sounds a bit rude to me. Don't lose your confidence!
Posted 
deleted.88416
Well In latin America the way to speak spanish and also the accent varies from countries to countries .Unless you spend all your time within the same country accent are really not a problem. Moreover even within the same countries there are a lot of regional accents. Usually it is a class issue. People with a specific accent being stereotyped as stupid or « bourgeois » or whatever. Most likely it was not your skill as a spanish speaker that was questioned but rather the imaginatory stereotypes carried by your accent to their mind. It is a old story. So you have nothing to worry there.
Posted 
Valeria.Fontes
Serge, your comment was perfect! Later I realized that was the issue, specially because of my pronunciation of the "r". I was complaining about it in my essay, but actually it made me learn and understand a lot of both language and socio-political traits. That level of language learning is a passion!
Posted 

Corrections

deleted.10171
Things that may hinder your foreign language speaking
Spanish has always been very easy to me because my dad used to listen to Latin American music, so I grew up acquainted with their phonetics, at least. I also started taking Flamenco and Salsa classes very early in life, what exposed me, once more, to music.
Besides that, I've already travelled (traveled in American) to many Spanish speaking countries. There were a lot of college time texts in Spanish too, and the literarture literature I love. That's to say I believed to be fluent in that language. I could even adapt to Argentinian, Mexican, Cuban, Castillian!
When I was in my 30's, I got married with a Peruvian guy, and that was the end of my confidence. His family laughed at my accent and vocabulary choices, spoke local slang so I couldn't understand conversations. To put it in a nutshell, I was bullied.
I know I should have taken it as fun, but it made me lose my confidence. I can still get away with fluent conversations, as well as travel with no problematic episodes, but I'm not at all as self-assured as I used to be.
Posted

Comment(s)

deleted.10171
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect The more you know, the more you know you don't know. As a language professional, I see it with speakers over estimating their abilities full stop. Internet B1 is real life A1-A2. So on and so forth.
Posted 
Feedback