By: Zainab Salam, Opinions Editor
When I was around eight years old, I had a friend who used to take me to her church’s community hall on weekends. Being me, I was always open to learning new things. So I’d attend her afternoon reading circles — it wasn’t anything serious, just a bunch of stories read to children. One notable tale, which I believe many of you would be privy to, is the “Tower of Babel.” The story goes that people once spoke the same language, but in their attempt to build a tower to the heavens, their speech was scattered into many tongues.
The fascination with that tale never really left me. Years later, I felt compelled to learn Spanish. I had been inspired by the idea that Spanish is the language spoken by over 600 million people worldwide. A statistic that has been achieved through the violent acts of Spanish colonialism. However, my younger self thought of the opportunities that learning a language would help make possible. From travelling to places I’ve never been to speaking with people I would otherwise never have the chance to talk to.
What had begun as a simpler form of practical curiosity had developed into something far more personal and transformative. Learning Spanish is about immersing oneself in the textures of life that language makes visible. Societies, and their customs, that I hadn’t been brought up in suddenly became accessible through reading and listening.
Beyond the riches of literary pages, learning Spanish opens up the opportunity to connect with the diverse array of individuals who speak it. Language learning involves more than learning words; it comes with learning new ways of living life. Whether it’s understanding memes or equipping yourself with learning new gestures to communicate unspoken information. Learning Spanish becomes an exhilarating experience of being reintroduced to the vastness of the world.
What makes this diversity brilliant is that it resists flattening. Spanish does not belong to one people or one culture. It’s made up of Afro-Caribbean rhythms, Andean myths, urban slang, and centuries of Indigenous traditions that are preserved through defiant acts of resistance. The complexity of Abya Yala (also known as Latin America), invites learners to reflect on the living quality of language; how communication is shaped by migration, politics, memory, and thoughtful embraces of life.
Learning Spanish, at least to me, isn’t about mastering its grammatical structures or learning thousands of vocabulary words that help me describe things. It’s about gaining a passport to a world of literature, and societies, that would otherwise be accessible through words that get lost in translation.
To learn Spanish is, in a sense, to piece together fragments of a larger human puzzle, where every new phrase is a key to another perspective.
Now, I reap the benefits of having learned Spanish. I feel connected through the communicative medium of spoken language, where I can listen to speeches given by world leaders (given in Spanish) and understand. I can help a family navigate an unfamiliar city using their language, which I had the pleasure of doing while I was in Turkey last summer. In those moments, I had the opportunity to experience the joys of stepping into common ground with other humans.
