Learning Spanish

Last year during my April 2013 hospitalization, one of my roommates was from Honduras. She did not speak that much English. She patiently taught me Spanish for two days. I was highly manic so my brain was wide open. I learned Spanish as easy as if I was a young child. To be fair, I studied French in middle and high schools and Spanish in college. But taking two languages only confused me. I know both equally poorly. In my head I can't tell the difference between Spanish and French. I have no accent for either language; I just sound like a Jersey girl trying to talk another language.

Pressured speech is a symptom of mania. It means I talk very fast, with the words rushing out of my mouth as if I'm going to lose the ability to speak in 5 minutes. The pressured speech meant that I sounded like a native Spanish speaker! I even had one of the patient care technicians ask me if I was Dominican because my Spanish was so good. That was such a compliment.

I have since lost my Spanish fluency. Use it or lose it. But I've just purchased a Rosetta Stone and I'll be moving in with a Puerto Rican friend next month. I'm going to use the Rosetta Stone and make my friend talk to me. (She used to work as a Spanish translator for PSE&G.)

I have more to say about learning Spanish; but I've put it in an op-ed for The New York Times. I'll know next week if they are going to print my article. If they don't, I'm going to try to submit it to the Bipolar Magazine.

So stay posted...