Babble away. I can speak Spanish with an accent that sounds like a native. Flexible tongue I guess. On the telephone, even friends mistake me for a native speaker. But listen close and my pronouns bounce every which way in the sentence, and I swing from passive to active voice like a lazy monkey.

I understand a great deal of Spanish, but I get very nervous when it comes to getting every point correct. When someone at my kid’s school communicates something to me, I want to get every point and tend to listen with so much effort it almost hurts. When the person is finished speaking, I am then processing like one of those hand-held translators: arroz=rice; frijoles=beans; complacidos=pleased; emplazar=locate; dolar de cabaza=headache. It goes into my brain: I translate it in a matter of nano-seconds into English; then translate back into Spanish what I want to say.

That pause I need while the translator engages in my head tends to make people awkward. Some will start speaking English; some blink to pass the silence; some say the same thing all over again. I do have to swallow my pride when it is important to understand exactly what’s being said and ask the person to repeat themselves. I get extremely nervous with friends because most of them speak better English than I do Spanish, and I feel foolish and self-conscious that my Spanish isn’t more polished.

Occasionally, I completely fake it. Once, the gardener I had at the time came into the house before leaving for the day. My mother was visiting and we were sitting in the sala - living room - while my daughter took a nap. He paused at the door and went on for about 10 minutes. I put down my book and listened intently. I nodded in agreement and probably said: la verdad, which means the truth, kind of a way to say: You bet! Ain’t that the truth! I agree.

He left.

My mother asked: What did he say?

I said I had no idea and shrugged. Sometimes there’s absolutely no harm in faking it.