I am a Rosalía stan... I don't speak Spanish... We exist

The skill that impressed me the most in my Brussels office had nothing really to do with work ethic, it was language skills - and by that I mean I sadly was the only person in the office who wasn’t fluent in two or more languages. Just in the account management team that surrounded me, I would hear Romanian, Turkish, French, German, Dutch, Bulgarian, Portuguese, and Spanish on a daily basis.

Growing up in the United States, I rarely even thought of different languages existing, outside of my few Spanish courses and bilingual friends. It also doesn’t affect career paths of most American students, so linguistics was simply something that didn’t cross my mind often. As we approached our application process for internships in Brussels, I became more and more nervous that I knew absolutely no French or Dutch and thought that it would make it difficult to land a quality internship.

I luckily secured a great internship, but then the fear of language barriers during my time in Brussels became present in the back of my head - should I download Duolingo? I eventually arrived in Belgium, with still no knowledge of French or Dutch. Little did I know that my office would be made up of individuals from what felt like almost every country in the European continent - Luxembourg, Spain, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, England, Portugal, Italy, Turkey, France, Germany, Austria, Romania, Greece - oh and Belgium of course! Hearing all of these new languages was not only extremely interesting, but eye-opening for me.

I realized how special it was to be bilingual or even better - a polyglot. Knowing multiple languages was definitely a skill in our office, as clients could ask for translations to be done in French or Dutch for their work - even when we operated as a fully English speaking office. I also became envious of those who spoke in multiple languages, especially the more rare ones, because it was almost as if they had their secret form of communication.

Ultimately, my encounter with so many different cultures and languages made me want to be at least bilingual and also learn more about European cultures. You can ask my Furman friends that lived on the hall with me in Brussels, I began to essentially only listen to Spanish music and became a bit obsessed with the culture. I quite literally fell in love with ROSALÍA, Bad Bunny, and J Balvin. Since Spanish is the only language I have studied in the past, I thought I could build upon it through music… right? I also had the opportunity to travel to Barcelona with friends and had an incredible time learning about the Catalan and Spanish cultures and languages.

Even though I was the least skilled in terms of linguistics in the office, I was however the only native English speaker and was constantly asked for my opinions and advice on the language for client work. This felt nice and kind of made up for the fact that I was incompetent in all other languages... kinda