I once compared Spanish to a worn pair of jeans and French to a starched tuxedo, and I think the comparison still holds.

Maybe it all comes down to those r’s.  Like that one beloved pair of jeans, the one that hugs you where you want, cedes when you need it to and knows the curves of your ass, the one that feels just right whether you’re sitting or walking or stretching or dancing, the Spanish r molds itself to your tongue, lets you move around with it comfortably.  It doesn’t matter whether you can roll it or not; it lets you pad it gently on the roof of your mouth instead.  You can make Spanish r’s long or short, fire them up to be sexy, spit them out in disgust or play with them like kittens; you can style them, wear them as you wish.  Not so in French.  The “r” is a sharp back-of-the-throat thrust which, if it lasts more than a second or so, indicates either you’re an American or you’re coughing up a hairball.  The French r’s style lies in it’s precision, just as a starched suit is all about crisp lines and impeccable form.  You fit it more than it fits you.

I remember when my dad came to visit me in France and could not, for the life of him, get my name straight.  “Sar-RAH!” he would say with pizzazz, like a drunk Italian kicking off a fiesta.  I think he wanted it to be Spanish, but unfortunately in Aix-en-Provence that r was a uniquely Frenchie production with all the rigorous precision of the painstakingly shaped, effortlessly perfect madeleleine.  The pronunciation of the r in “St. Victoire,” which is achieved by pursing one’s lips and exhaling a gentle puff of air like a 1920’s starlet, was far beyond his reach, although he compensated for phonic incompetence with emotive hand gestures.  He’s simply not a starched suit kind of man.

And I, his daughter, am not generally one for the careful lines of ironed skirts, not much one for precision and the rigidity of form above free-wheeling  function, although I respect that if French jives with your personality, and if you’re the type of person for whom exhileration is the achievement of stunning form, than French is a brilliant language.  To me, Spanish is just so much more fluid, so much easier to play with, dance with, relax with.  I have my theory that this is a cultural as well as a linguistic phenomenon; whereas the French are likely to raise a discerning eyebrow at the end of your sentence, the Mexicans are just as likely to nod without missing a beat.

Perhaps this relative laxness with regards to form is because there is simply so much variation possible in Spanish, and half of learning the language, really, is listening in jaw-dropping wonder to the structures that morph in artful defiance of whatever your grammar teacher taught you.  You can pick up that reflexive and move it around, throw in a pronoun or not, make something tiny, big or enormous with the addition of itos and isisimos.  (Incidentally, my dog is rarely only a “perro” – she’s got to be either a perrito, which I assume is a non-literal term of affection since she’s a 60-pound German Shepherd, or a perrote, a description that continues to work in my favor with regards to machismo.)

So despite my background in French, and the weakness I have for the challenge of reaching that elevated plane of the aesthetically impeccable only the French can truly inhabit, Spanish is my language.  It’s a language for the instinctual, a language for people who love playing with and thinking about words like puzzle pieces or legos, building structures with multiple meanings and implications.

Along with this desire Spanish evokes to play with the possibilities of language comes a much more nuanced and refined appreciation of individual words.  Whereas before I piled words in exuberant heaps with a more – is –more uncritical love of language, now I deal with them a bit more cautiously.  It is a different view of language, a different kind of love.  I think learning any language makes you a more careful and respectful appreciator of the power of words (anyone who’s made the mistake of laughingly saying they’re embarazada knows that feeling).  Now, I spend some time with words, stop mid-sentence to think about them, roll ‘em around in my mouth for a bit like mints or butterscotch candies.  Escarabajo.  Sencillo.  Entonces.  Ya.  Each one a linguistic-cultural microcosm in and of itself.  (And this isn’t even touching on slang, and the possibilities of huevos).

So Spanish and my increasingly honed attention to words go hand and hand.  But also, quite simply, I like the sound of Spanish.  The big potbellied “o” of gordo.  The little scurrying feet of ahorita.  The up-down lilt of ideal like the crest and fall of a wave.  The mantra-esque sounds of mañana and lo que sea.  The drawn out, three-step, melancholy fall of tristeza.  The a’s and o’s that float at the end of words.  And of course, the unbeatable r’s.