Comment allez-vous?

I went to Pro’s Ranch Market on Tuesday afternoon to gather my data. The first question was the hardest to ask. After I got over my fear of looking like an ignorant gringa that I have tried over so many years not to be, it became much easier. I tried approaching the employees from two different directions. The first way I asked was by playing as if I was learning Spanish and didn’t know what the items were and I was just curious. I found it helpful to play this role because they always spoke very clearly and slowly to me. The flipside of this role-play was that they would continue the conversation in English instead of Spanish.

My other approach to asking the employees questions was picking an arbitrary food and explaining that I am a Spanish teacher at UNM and many of my students always ask me whatever this particular thing is – in Spanish. This worked well because after they heard me speak Spanish and realized that I wasn’t the blonde American that I look like I am, they would freely have a conversation with me. This made the “mande?” or “como?” question come much more naturally. This worked especially well when I spoke with a couple señoras who were selling jewelry. We had a nice conversation about jewelry and my teaching.

Out of the 10 employees that I asked questions, 9 of them spoke fluent Spanish. One woman said she spoke some Spanish but not a lot. In any case, she knew the word for cookies. All of the employees were very helpful and after I asked them one question, they always asked me what else I’d like to know. They were more than willing to help me out and didn’t make me feel even more stupid and embarrassed than I already was!

I had an interesting encounter with one employee in particular. As I was looking over all of the seafood and fish, he noticed me looking very confused (and I honestly was). Instead of starting a conversation with me in English or let alone Spanish, he started in French! I know very little French so once I got past the “Hello, how are you? Good, thanks” I immediately switched to Spanish! It was weird! He spoke perfect English and Spanish. I left him just as confused as I was before.