Learning a new language is a challenge that many recommend starting when you are a child or teenager. However, in Nueva Lengua we met a student who likes to challenge this idea.

"For me, the most important thing is to value the attempt, not to speak perfect"says Barbara, 80, an American woman, born in New York, who has lived in many countries around the world and accepts that her greatest passion is connecting with people. Therefore, learning Spanish while living in Colombia has been very important to her. She doesn't know exactly what motivated her to enter a Spanish school at the age of 77, but she feels grateful that she chose Nueva Lengua: “The first time I was at the school, for 4 weeks in 2019, I felt like a family, this year when I came back, there were a lot of new people, but just being in this place reminds me that I have a community in Colombia, like another family. ”. 

Barbarita, as we affectionately call her at school, estimates that she has learned about 100 words in each country where she lived, such as France or Palestine. From the survival quotes even specific words that helped him interact with the natives of the places: “People treat me very differently when I try to speak their language, it is a different experience, because I am trying. I make mistakes but it's not important…”, Barbara has friends all over the world, or in her words “a little piece of me in each country”, and it is certain that I would not have achieved that connection with others without his powerful idea that the most important thing is always to try.

The customs and culture of a place have a great gateway through language, because precisely these customs are built and established by the people who live in a place, curiously, languages ​​work in the same way, although they have the structures grammar and rules, we are the speakers of each language who give meaning to their words. In the case of Spanish, Bárbara has learned and lived it for a long time; likewise, she finds other doors in dance, whose private lessons, mainly salsa, she takes three times a week at school, and she enjoys practicing with other students in group classes. Likewise, she enjoys Colombian food; On one occasion we visited with her and other students of hers the Plaza de Paloquemao, where Bárbara always enjoyed talking to people, interacting and connecting with them while she enjoyed her favorite Colombian fruits.

For Bárbara, it is vital to get to a place and be able to greet a person, say thank you and say goodbye: “When I see her smile, it warms my heart, it is an exchange”. A kind word in Spanish in exchange for a smile. “For me it is important to believe that the person has value and that 30-second connection with someone who generates a “hello” or a “bonjour” is valuable”. Barbara affirms that it is important to know that when you travel and get to know other places, the mistaken idea that many people have of being the center of the world simply disappears. There is no center of the world, we are all around, so talking to another person and receiving a response is an almost magical way of connecting with the world around you.

When I asked her what has been the most difficult for her in her process of learning Spanish at the age of 80, her answer was: “think before speaking”, followed by a laugh. She says that, all her life, she was used to expressing everything that she had in her head, without a specific filter because she handled English naturally, but in Spanish, this filter was necessary: “If I spoke more slowly I would speak better, because it's hard to let go of the idea of ​​just expressing, it excites me a lot to speak and it's hard to think before doing it”.

After having studied at the school for more than two months, having met people from all countries, making friends thanks to her incredible ability to empathize with others, Barbarita had her last class in Nueva Lengua On June 24, when I asked him what his plans are for Spanish, he could only tell me that he is going to continue studying it, conversing with people, studying his grammar and maintaining his B2 level, as we would say in Spanish, smooth sailing. Like any process of learning a language: you have a starting point but never an end point, you continue in it all your life, and as Barbarita says: the important thing is to try, and keep trying every day.