Living in the U.S., I hear Spanish spoken all the time. I hear it on the streets, in restaurants, among the building staff where I live. A lot of Spanish words are also just incorporated into our everyday vernacular. For example, people in the U.S. do not call coriander “coriander.” We call it “cilantro.” You don’t see the word “cilantro” in grocery stores in Australia, the U.K., or India, though. You see it called “coriander.” That’s because “cilantro” is a Spanish word. Although I don’t know or speak Spanish, I can understand and say a number of things, like greetings, thank you, how to ask where the bathroom is, asking how much something costs, for a bill, tip, lots of objects and foods, etc. I also understand contextually when people are asking me questions. The most common question I will get asked when traveling is, “Where are you from?” In Mexican Spanish, you would say this as, “donde estas?” When we got asked this question while traveling in Mexico and Colombia, I always knew what was being asked, and I always replied, “Estados Unidos” (United States). When people have asked me this, multiple times in Spanish, on this trip, whether it was in Chile, Uruguay, or Argentina, I had no freaking clue what they asked. In Argentina, I have a feeling they asked, “De donde eres?” But between their accent, tones, and flow of words, I just couldn’t make out what they said until they asked me in English. I felt a bit dumb, especially since these are basic questions that someone who is exposed to Spanish should be able to understand.

Like how English doesn’t sound the same in Australia vs. New Zealand, vs. the UK vs. the U.S., Spanish is also not the same. There are phrases and ways of saying things that are not the same. There are also entirely different words used for the same thing. I was reading that for a selection of Argentine pastries (that have roots in Europe, not surprisingly), they have completely renamed them to terms that are only used in Argentina because “Argentines like to think they’re different,” one tongue-in-cheek post on Reddit said. They will recognize what you are asking for if you ask for a profiterole, but they will actually call them bombas (bombs) and be labeled as such. In Argentina, pastries are called “fracturas,” while in Uruguay, they are called “bizcochos.” When we moved on from Chile to Uruguay, I noticed immediately that the Spanish and accents were quite different. It’s interesting to think about how language changes and morphs, and how our understanding of it changes, as well.