I speak English.
That is the honest answer.
I also speak Southern English, which is technically English, but with more contractions, more dropped consonants, more “y’all,” and a few phrases that do not translate well outside the South. I can say “fixin’ to” with complete sincerity. I know that “bless your heart” can mean anything from sincere compassion to a formal declaration of war. I understand that “over yonder” is a real location, even if it does not appear on Google Maps.
So yes, I speak English.
Mostly.
Beyond that, my linguistic skills get a little shaky.
At the start of seventh grade, we took six weeks each of German, Spanish and French. It was a brief little tour through the languages of the world, or at least the languages offered in our middle school. Apparently, I did well enough in those classes that Mom thought I could have explored becoming a translator.
That would have been an interesting career path.
Unfortunately, the world’s future diplomats were not exactly lining up to hire the kid whose greatest foreign language achievement would one day be, “The pen is blue.”
I ended up taking Spanish in eighth grade, but then I transferred schools midyear and didn’t take another language again until college. There, I took two semesters of Spanish, which should have been enough to make me at least mildly useful in a Spanish-speaking country.
Instead, all these years later, I have phrases like:
La pluma es azul.
La silla es blanca.
La mujer es muy bonita.
And then I quickly run out of road.
At that point, the next sentence I really need is, “How do you say, ‘Please don’t hurt me for butchering your beautiful language’ in Spanish?”
For the record, I think it would be something like:
Por favor, no me haga daño por destrozar su hermoso idioma.
Which sounds a little dramatic, but probably appropriate.
I can probably still manage a little Pig Latin, too, if absolutely necessary, though I’m not sure when that would be useful unless I’m trying to negotiate with a fifth grader from 1978.
The truth is, I wish I had learned another language well. I admire people who can move comfortably between languages, because that is not just about knowing different words. It is about understanding different cultures, different rhythms and different ways of thinking. Language carries history, humor, family, faith, frustration and love. When you learn another language, you are not just memorizing vocabulary. You are stepping into someone else’s world.
I never really did that.
What I did do was spend my life with English. Reading it. Writing it. teaching it. Correcting it. Occasionally abusing it for comic effect.
English has shaped my life because words have always mattered to me. They have helped me tell stories, teach students, make arguments, write reflections, explain faith, preserve memories and occasionally talk myself out of problems I probably talked myself into.
So, no, I do not speak multiple languages.
I speak English.
I speak Southern.
I speak teacher.
I speak sarcasm.
I speak “I’m fixin’ to lose my patience” fluently.
And on rare occasions, under pressure, I might speak enough Spanish to identify a blue pen, a white chair and a very pretty woman.
After that, I’m going to need a translator.
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Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.
My mom’s family is from Tennessee, so I can totally relate to “fixin’ to,” which was part of my mom’s and grandma’s vernacular despite decades living in Michigan.
Same with “warsh,” which my mom swore was pronounced that way because she cleaned things better than half-assed northerners who merely “washed” something. As much as I resisted these tendencies, “purt near” and “do what, now” have infiltrated my parlance.