Gringo

This past summer, I spent a good bit of my time with my best friend’s family in a suburb of Chicago. Her parents are from Mexico, and my friend actually spent some her formative years in the country as well before coming to the US. For me, it was very interesting to be in a household where English is not necessarily the primary language. It required quite a bit of adjustment on my part to begin to understand the subtleties of this dynamic; the way the two languages meshed together to form a dialect that is altogether unique.

The first thing I had to become accustomed to was the very loud nature of Spanish conversations between my friend and her parents. Even if could never quite understand what was being said, from a volume standpoint, I could always hear it perfectly. This stood in stark contrast to the way I was usually spoken to in English when I was around. Conversations were always in hushed tones, and almost always involved questions about my well-being. At times, it felt as if these parents were more concerned about me than they were about their own child. This may have had something to do with the guest and host dynamic, but it seemed like more than that at times.

Another thing I quickly realized was that Spanish is a very possessive language. My friend would always refer to her mother as ‘my mom’, even when talking to her brother or father. This struck me as odd because, generally when you speak about a mother, you’re talking about your own and there’s really no need to stake claim to them by adding the word ‘my’. I assume this discrepancy has something to do with being bilingual and transferring knowledge of grammar between languages, but it was noticeable and curious to me nonetheless.

One personal adjustment I had to make in this situation is that I suddenly had to become a much more active listener. Whenever my friend was in the room, conversations would generally be in (loud) Spanish. I had to draw upon my high school Spanish classes to pick out words, which resulted in me knowing, at the very least, what nouns were involved. I never really figured out the name I was consistently referred to as in Spanish (it started as ‘tu amigo’, but as the summer wore on I must have earned some other title because I began to not hear those words used)