Why I Thought I’d Never Speak Spanish, and How I Did It Anyway

---

It’s easy to look at someone who already speaks a second language and assume it comes naturally to them.

If you see a video of me speaking Spanish in 2010, you might think that speaking Spanish was always my destiny. I’m “naturally talented” with languages, and the pieces just fell into place.

BULLSHIT.

For years, all the evidence seemed to point the other way. My “destiny” was to never speak Spanish. I’d be good at maths and computers, but not languages.

If you think I’m exaggerating, read on.

The destiny excuse comes in many forms: “It’s just not meant to be”, “It’s genetic” and “No matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to do it”. I want to share some of the “signs” I saw for years, because the finished success story leaves a lot out.

Many learners have struggles of their own, and it can be demotivating to think that somebody else had it easy. I didn’t.

A note from the Fluent in 3 Months team before we get started: You can chat away with a native speaker for at least 15 minutes with the “Fluent in 3 Months” method. All it takes is 90 days. Tap this link to find out more.

Not the best start: Speech therapy

I spent the first years of my life very ill and was admitted to hospital for some time. After I recovered, that experience was one reason I chose not to smoke, to eat healthily and not to drink. One unfortunate consequence of that early illness was that I developed difficulty speaking.

I needed speech therapy and had particular trouble with my English R, not the rolled R. My brother still teases me that my favourite TV show was “Stah Trek”.

Some effects lingered. I learnt to speak more slowly, and my private lessons focused on careful pronunciation. I never developed a very strong accent from Cavan, where I’m from, and people from abroad often told me my English was easy to understand.

Starting late with clear spoken English hardly looked like preparation for speaking other languages. I still had to think carefully while I spoke, so the idea that I had a natural talent for languages never matched my experience.

Interest in Spanish piqued, but no encouragement to practise

My serious interest in languages came later, but I was curious about Spanish as a teenager. A group of students from the Canary Islands spent July in my town several years in a row, and I became good friends with them. They loved how easy my English was to understand.

They naturally spoke Spanish with one another, so I asked what things meant and even printed out the lyrics to “La Macarena” to try reading them aloud. But their parents had paid for an English immersion experience, and they wanted to speak English with the locals. My attempts to learn a word or two of Spanish were met with “Don’t be silly”.

So I gave up trying. Why keep going if my attempts were only going to annoy them? I spent four or five summers with the group, but never learnt more than hola, and I wouldn’t even try saying that to them.

The academic conspiracy: If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail and fail again

When I was at school in Ireland, the university route I was following required me to study another language alongside English and Irish. My school wasn’t offering Chinese or the musicality of Italian. The choice was French or German. Like it or lump it.

I went out of my way to ask whether I could take Spanish. Not a hope. My school didn’t have a Spanish teacher, so German it was. After five years of barely caring, I got a C and still couldn’t ask for directions when I first went to Germany, even though we’d practised that exact skill repeatedly.

My dismal result in German reinforced the idea that this whole language-learning thing wasn’t for me.

Then I had another chance. Irish universities don’t use the same major and minor system as American universities, but mine offered free evening language classes. Spanish was available.

Every year, I went to the cultural talk that promoted the optional class, and I was the first to hand in my application. I didn’t need convincing, but that was where we had to apply.

Every year, they turned me down. The class filled up too quickly. The first time, I was annoyed and accepted it. By my third year, I was determined. I went to the first class and begged the teacher to let me take the empty seat I could see.

Rules were rules, and I wasn’t on the list. When I finally asked the organiser why I was rejected every time, I learnt how the system worked: they took the first 15 people, or whatever the limit was, from the top of the paper stack. Because I handed mine in first, it was at the bottom.

#ironyoverload

My enthusiasm was the reason I wasn’t getting into the classes.

Lesson learnt: stop being enthusiastic and give up. Universe 1, Benny 0.

Finally in Spain! But don’t think it’s going to be that easy

I didn’t give up entirely. I waited until the end of my studies, then applied for a summer internship after graduation. I’d been working hard to pass a demanding university course with a high failure rate, and sunny Spain sounded like a well-earned change.

I flicked through a Spanish course and convinced myself that a few days of preparation would have me muttering the basics when I arrived. I wasn’t prepared for the strength of the expat bubble.

An English-speaking Spaniard met me at the airport and took me to an apartment with an English-speaking Brazilian and German. Our work-exchange programme, IAESTE, brought together people from around the world, and they became my social group. English was the language at work and when we went out.

It began to feel as though English was everywhere. The signs, products and television were in Spanish, and strangers around me spoke Spanish, but my friends and colleagues spoke English. That made it easy to stay in English too.

It’s a familiar expat trap. If language ability was supposed to be fixed, why bother fighting it? I was tempted to conclude that I’d simply been born bad at languages.

I reconsidered a few times over those months. I even signed up for a fairly expensive course, as though throwing money at the problem was bound to solve it.

I felt like the worst student in the class. Other students answered questions while all I heard was ¿Blah blah blah blah blah? After several attempts, I was getting nowhere. Watching them laugh and enjoy the class made me jealous and frustrated, and I gave up again.

After six months living in Spain, I still couldn’t put together a basic sentence.

Destiny is all in your head

At 21, with this background, the message seemed clear: Spanish wasn’t meant for me. I had plenty of reasons to believe I would never speak it, and for a while my mind stayed fixed on that idea.

But I had one trick up my sleeve that “bad genes”, speaking problems, unhelpful schools, discouraging native speakers and all those supposed signs couldn’t knock:

I don’t believe in destiny.

I don’t buy it. Destiny may sound romantic when people talk about a couple who were meant to be together. But using a vague idea of genetics as a verdict on what you can learn is not evidence. It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you keep telling yourself you’re hopeless at languages, you may stop looking for an approach that works. Much of my work on this site isn’t about revealing a magic language-learning trick. It’s about challenging the belief that one bad experience has already settled the question.

Language learning can involve real barriers. Disability, money, time, access and health all matter. My point is narrower: a rough start or a failed method does not, by itself, prove that you cannot learn. Persistence may help you find an approach that fits your circumstances, and it doesn’t have to be my way.

Nothing in this story “proves” that my destiny was not to speak Spanish. It only shows that what I was doing at the time wasn’t getting me there. So I tried something else. I waited several years between attempts, but once I was ready to make Spanish a priority, things changed dramatically.

The story continues with me looking closely at what was holding me back, changing my approach and finally becoming “good” at languages.

Persistence wins over destiny

Experimentation brings both positive and negative results. You can treat experiment number one as the final verdict, or use what it teaches you when you try experiment number two.

Success stories are selective. You only know what the person telling the story chooses to include, and the ugliest setbacks often disappear from the polished version. That can make somebody else’s progress look effortless.

Before deciding that everybody else has it easy, ask what part of the story you aren’t seeing. Someone who appears to sail towards a goal may have dealt with setbacks you know nothing about.

Sometimes progress comes from being stubborn enough to ignore the supposed signs, learn from what failed and make your own destiny.

What do you think?