Actually let me revise that. I didn't learn to "speak Spanish," exactly. According to the ever-reliable Google Translate, I learned how to say the following in Spanish, very well, repeatedly, and in a soulful, extremely cheesy R&B ballad voice:
Girl, you are my life
The tenderness
And joy, my love
And this dream
With you it will be true (yeah yeah)
"Yeah, yeah," it turns out, is the same in both Spanish and English.
Now. You might be questioning the utility of this sentence for a heterosexual teenage (at the time) girl. You'd be right to do so. My time would have been much better spent studying more rigorously in my college entry-level Spanish class words and phrases like "where's the bathroom, it's kind of an emergency" and "where can I find some Aloe for this vicious sunburn."
But sadly it wasn't meant to be. Although my Spanish professor told me I had a "good accent," I owe that to a youth spent eavesdropping on the denizens of Northern Manhattan and Spanish Harlem, which caused me to name my first Cabbage Patch kid "Mira Galinda."
This was the sad terminus of my Spanish language knowledge, bolstered, once again, by the four-dude power vocal group Color Me Badd. Truly you must, and I mean MUST watch or re-watch the video to "I Adore, Mi Amor."
Even as a young tween, I knew these guys were not my type. All I wanted was for a smart, funny, mildly-attractive tall boy with good taste in books and movies and limited sexual aggression to fall hopelessly in love with me. It didn't really get my motor running to think about a greased-up hard-body with a pencil-thin mustache and more hair product on his head than you could find in an aisle of Wal Greens serenading me yearningly while dry humping me up against a palm tree.
Anyway, this video is four minutes of your life you will never get back, and I promise, you won't want to.
Girl, you are my life
The tenderness
And joy, my love
And this dream
With you it will be true (yeah yeah)
"Yeah, yeah," it turns out, is the same in both Spanish and English.
Now. You might be questioning the utility of this sentence for a heterosexual teenage (at the time) girl. You'd be right to do so. My time would have been much better spent studying more rigorously in my college entry-level Spanish class words and phrases like "where's the bathroom, it's kind of an emergency" and "where can I find some Aloe for this vicious sunburn."
But sadly it wasn't meant to be. Although my Spanish professor told me I had a "good accent," I owe that to a youth spent eavesdropping on the denizens of Northern Manhattan and Spanish Harlem, which caused me to name my first Cabbage Patch kid "Mira Galinda."
This was the sad terminus of my Spanish language knowledge, bolstered, once again, by the four-dude power vocal group Color Me Badd. Truly you must, and I mean MUST watch or re-watch the video to "I Adore, Mi Amor."
Even as a young tween, I knew these guys were not my type. All I wanted was for a smart, funny, mildly-attractive tall boy with good taste in books and movies and limited sexual aggression to fall hopelessly in love with me. It didn't really get my motor running to think about a greased-up hard-body with a pencil-thin mustache and more hair product on his head than you could find in an aisle of Wal Greens serenading me yearningly while dry humping me up against a palm tree.
Anyway, this video is four minutes of your life you will never get back, and I promise, you won't want to.
