Sometimes I forget speak English

I take weekly individual tango dance lessons from a guy named Oscar at his apartment in downtown Buenos Aires. One day he comes down to let me in, says hi to the doorman (doorwoman? “portera” in Spanish) and as we start walking up the stairs he says “speak in English”. So we talk for a little bit and then I say, in English, “why are we speaking in English?”

“It’s the doorwoman. She asks me about what I do, why I keep bringing people up to my apartment, I try to keep it vague, make things interesting. I thought speaking English would add to the mystery a little bit.”

This then led to a conversation about the nature of how your neighbors knowing what you do can lead to them complaining about you in a different way “oh it’s noisy, must be that musician” if they know you’re a musician, etc. This wasn’t the thing that threw me about our conversation though.

We switched back to Spanish soon after reaching his apartment. What struck me though was how odd it felt at first to speak English to him. I’ve known Oscar for several months now, and I consider him a good friend; in addition to tango we’ve had lots of interesting conversations about everything from politics to physiology to philosophy (and of course women). But I’ve never really spoken to him in English for any length of time and only had a dim recollection that he spoke English (I sent him a link to something about blues dancing and remembered that I wouldn’t have to translate it because he spoke some English).

My study abroad program The Institute for Study Abroad (IFSA) tries to encourage its students to speak Spanish all the time amongst ourselves, but I’ve stopped respecting this rule. I was trying to figure out why. It isn’t just because I’m lazy or tired of speaking Spanish all the time—I don’t spend much time with other Americans and don’t actively seek out their company. Part of it may be that I just realize that it isn’t ideal for communicating and I figure I keep up my Spanish just fine speaking with other Argentines. This semester there have been weeks I've gone without speaking any English at all, apart from talking to my family on skype (I certainly read, write and listen to plenty though). You just get used to operating in one language in certain contexts and another language in others.

I always spoke English with my father even though it wasn’t his native tongue. He (and I) received a lot of flack about this later. Why didn’t you teach him Spanish? The closest to an answer my dad ever gave was, “well he didn’t want to”. I think he just didn’t really know why.

I’ve been in Buenos Aires for just a month shy of nine months. I don’t tend to think of him as a foreign student, but my dad was in the U.S. a lot longer than that. Like the entire time he knew my mother (several years, most of which they weren’t officially dating). The jolt I felt with Oscar must have been similar to what he felt speaking Spanish around Mom.

Dad and I have another thing in common of our experiences studying abroad; we both changed our names. Here I’ve told people that my name is Mariano, instead of Stephen, something I decided on doing before I got here. It's not a complete fabrication--Mariano is my middle name, after my great-grandfather on my dad's side. The superficial reason is that Mariano is easier to pronounce in Spanish than “Esteefen”. But it’s also a way of creating a different sort of person for a different world. My dad quit Opus Dei in Guatemala as “Geno” (short for Eugenio, his middle name—Marco was his dad’s name too) to pursue higher education abroad as his given name “Marco”. If someone called our house on the phone and asked for my dad, you instantly knew they were friends or family pre-1980 if they asked for Geno instead of Marco (or, you know, "Dad", another new name).

Rechristening yourself is one of the perks of travel.