When I was a young student, and the foreign language teachers wanted to convince us Latin-trained former middle schoolers to take a modern language in high school, they told us that we would have no trouble keeping the two languages separate in our brains. And it turned out to mostly be true. I became conversational in French and rarely tried to substitute a Latin word.

Looking back, I think I probably benefited from the fact that we didn’t learn Latin as a spoken language. There was no reason for Latin words to pop into my head while speaking French, because I never spoke Latin. But now I’m learning Spanish, and French words keep trying to show up. Sometimes I think it’s just that I don’t know the Spanish, but I’ve definitely substituted French words when I should have known the Spanish. Once I said “sept” and was met with “siete?” and I’m sitting there thinking “isn’t that what I said?” until it finally struck me why I was being asked this. Perhaps more disturbingly, Spanish is occasionally creeping in to my French. My daughter asked me a yes/no question in French and I said “sí,” and she just glared at me.

I’m learning Spanish, because I think it’s beneficial for a Catholic lay pastoral minister to be at least passingly familiar with the language. And I’m having fun learning another language. But it’s not without its challenges.