It's the journey, not the destination...

When we first made the decision to move to Barcelona back in 2017, "hola" was one of about 100 Spanish words I knew. I'd dabbled a bit back in the early noughties, often travelling to Spain as an examiner and language school inspector, but what I'd learned had long since been buried under a tottering babel of Chinese, Tigrinya, Bangla, Turkish, Slovak, more French, and countless other linguistic dalliances.

In fact I was so thoroughly rusty that I even asked myself – a lifelong enthusiast for languages – whether I could face going back to square one for the umpteenth time, and learning the words for street, apple, library, gluteus maximus...

It's been a long journey over these seven years, and one into which I've put a huge amount of effort: reading novels and weighty tomes of history, learning infinite lists of vocabulary (always from my reading, and in context), listening to endless hours of podcasts and radio.

These days I've gone way beyond the intermediate plateau: my listening is basically native level – in that I can turn on the radio and follow what's being said without even trying. The only time I trip up is with series set in the Málaga gangland, for example – a slice of life of which I have surprisingly little experience, despite looking like a hitman in a suit.

Ditto for my reading, although I do stop to look up unfamiliar words now and again. That said, I do that in English too.

But the difficulty of those words has also gone up a level or eight: it's no longer fruit or body parts, but far more advanced vocabulary these days – all of which I store on the Reverso app on my phone, and regularly revise. I reckon I learn about 150 new words a week – luckily there are fewer "new words" out there for me now. Just today I added "crestfallen", "burly", "work your socks off" and "overstep the mark", to my list as well as the delightful Spanish expression for "it's a piece of cake" – "coser y cantar" which literally translates as "sewing and singing".

It has to be said, my writing probably leaves a lot to be desired, for the simple reason the only time I've ever had to write a text in real life was to report a stolen wallet at a Barcelona police station. Emails don't count, and I usually check them in DeepL anyway, because of the idiosyncratic vagaries of Spanish punctuation...

As for speaking, it's certainly a lot better than it used to be, but I'd still only give myself a grudging 7.5 out of 10. Believe it or not, even while living in Spain, it was actually difficult to practise at the beginning, outside of superficial encounters in shops. And making friends is no longer as easy as when you were young and carefree. By the time you get to my and Methuselah's ages, people have their social lives sorted, thank you very much. The people that you're most likely to end up befriending will often be as footloose – and therefore as non-Spanish – as you are...

But between my teachers and valiant forays deep into Spanish society (where the natives are indeed very friendly), I slowly improved. Now, when I get into proper discussions, I can talk about US foreign policy, culture wars or gender discrimination with the best of them, but when I'm tired, or a bit low, then the doors to expression seem to swing shut and I end up speaking a more fractured, tongue-tied Castilian.

And yet, for the very first time yesterday, someone who actually knows what they are talking about (as in PhD in philology) told me I spoke excellent Spanish. I'll take that before she changes her mind. :D

All in all, looking back on the odyssey from apples and buttocks to being about to embark on a Master's in Spanish, I think I can now, at last sit back, enjoy the view, and smell the coffee...