Over at the Itzel Library – a Mexican book review site – Yel interviewed me about Vegas Knights. While all our interactions were in English, she translated the entire interview into Spanish as well and posted a braided version of the interview in both languages.
Back when I graduated college, I could speak Spanish fluently. As part of my degree through the Residential College at the University of Michigan, I took two terms of intensive Spanish, plus a term of conversational Spanish. Each of the intensive courses was worth eight credits, and we met for two hours four days a week, plus had 15 minutes of lab work each day. On top of that, we had a Spanish-only lunch table in the cafeteria and met for a Spanish-only coffee hour once per week.
At the end of those two terms, I had to pass a United Nations level 3 fluency exam, which was a three-hour exam topped by a fifteen-minute interview with two native speakers of the language. If I failed it, I risked losing out on all eight credits for that term. I studied so hard, I actually wound up dreaming in Spanish for the week before the exam.
Of course, now I’ve lost most of it. I can puzzle out some of what Yel wrote, but mostly because there’s a reliable translation right next to it. Someday I’ll get back into it. Someday. Or maybe I’ll just come to rely on Google Translate even more.
Meanwhile, Yel’s giving away an autographed copy of Vegas Knights to one of her followers. Win it, and I’ll dedicate it to you and ship it on out. Good luck!
