Asking Stupid Questions

How to learn spanish speaking

“Let’s go on the street to practice English with strangers!” Svit said.

Attracted by the idea, I immediately accepted her proposal without thinking twice about what to say to strangers.

Weirdos, you must think we are good at Spanish so we can converse with strangers on the street. It’s totally the opposite. Neither of us is conversational level. Numerically, we are both A1.1. Practically, we cannot go behind 10 seconds of a proper conversation.

However, the moment we went out, Svit immediately reached out to a stranger and asked

¿qué hora es? (What time is it?)

I was SHOCKED because it looked incredibly stupid. But the stranger still took out the phone and told us it was 6:30 pm now. Svitlana said, “Gracias, nosotras practicamos español. (We practice Spanish)” and turned to me, smiling, “we practiced number!”

And then we went into a grocery store, trying to recognize everything in Spanish. She saw a pink sponge and asked me how to say pink in Spanish.

“Rojo?” (red)

“No…”

“No se” (Don’t know)

And she did the next crazy thing. She took the pink sponge to an employee in the store and asked

de qué color es? (What color is it?)

Yes. YEs. YES. Wtfffff. She took the pink sponge and asked “What color is it?” 🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

So does the way she took a potato to another employee and asked

¿qué es? (What is it?)

(Note: I took another rarer fruit so I won’t look this stupid.)

I was completely in shock that she dared to say this to another human being. It feels humiliating, frightening, scary, and stupid. But she has no shame.

But she is right. No one we talked to laughed at us. Even though some of them acted slightly awkwardly, they all responded to our stupid 3-year-old questions to the two grown-up adults.

People like to say, “Don’t be afraid of asking stupid questions.” And yes, her questions are indeed STUPID questions, and I’m afraid of asking them. I had great admiration for my friend, because deep down I knew, that’s how you learn, not only for a language but for everything. You ought to start with something stupid, but I have too much ego to even start.

Inspired, I gotta ask more stupid questions in Spanish, and everything in my life this week.

(Ahhhh… I’m so scared!)