looking back

One day it occurred to me to ask my Dad what it was like going to the doctor when we lived in Spain:

"Your mother took you to most appointments after a while. Especially the emergency ones. She spoke the language better. I had to have a colonoscopy once, and there was a hospital where there was just one doctor who spoke English. It was really far away, but I went there anyway, because you know, for something that important, you want to be able to understand what they're saying to you."

This, coming from my American, white, middle-class, male father, who spent 3 years in language school when we moved to Spain. I'm not sure what other layer of privilege you could find to add to that list - by any account, he should've had it easy. Plus, my father is a smart man. He now works in think tanks on things that I barely understand, and collaborates with people in his field literally around the globe. Even so, back in Spain he avoided encountering the medical field, and when he did his access to care was severely restricted by language.

We have to quit faulting people for not being able to communicate with us like native speakers when they're not. My Dad learned Spanish. He worked hard, for years. It was literally the main focus of his work week for the first several years we were living in country. But as an adult, there are, simply put, limits to what you can learn, no matter how hard you try. Plus, you learn language based on the context you need it for. So if you're not in and out of the doctor's office all the time, chances are you won't learn the specific language skills you need for that context, so that even if you're "fluent" for the purposes of everyday life, you're flummoxed in clinic.

My Dad didn't have access to an interpreter, so I couldn't ask him what that was like. But to his and my mother's credit, they never tried to make my sister or myself serve as their quasi-interpreters. Just as well, because we weren't learning language for the medical context either.