La Clase de Español - The Spanish Class

Leaning Spanish from Novelas

¡Hola!

A few weeks ago, the world of sport lost one of its greatest basketball players, Kobe Bryant, who was a star player with the Los Angeles

Lakers. As is common when a public figure or a celebrity dies, news stories and documentaries share the person’s life story and the legacy they leave behind. One of the surprising facts that many of his fans learnt after Kobe’s death is that he was multilingual: he spoke fluent English, Spanish, and Italian. Although

Kobe was born in the United States, at six years old he and his family moved to Italy where he went to school and spoke Italian until his return to the United States when he was thirteen. At

21, he married his wife, Vanessa, who is of Latin heritage. In interviews prior to his death, Kobe liked to joke that he learnt Spanish by watching novelas with his wife and mother-in-law. In addition to this, he famously said that the Latin community in Los Angeles was the first to embrace him as a basketball player and he learnt the language in order to connect with them more.

Here is a snippet of an interview he did, with an English translation: Entrevistador: Kobe, lo primero que Interviewer: Kobe, the first thing that muchos quieren saber: ¿Cómo many people want to know: How did aprendiste a hablar español? you learn to speak Spanish?

Kobe: Mirando novelas. Kobe: Watching novelas. Entrevistador: ¿Con Vanessa? ¿Te Interviewer: With Vanessa? Did they hacían mirar las novelas? make you watch novelas?

Kobe: Con Vanessa, mi esposa. Con Kobe: With Vanessa, my wife. With mi suegra también.¿Cómo se llama?... my mother in law as well... What’s it ¿Cómo se llamaba esta novela? “¡La called?... What was the name of this Madrastra!” novela? “The Mother-in-law!” Entrevistador: La Madrastra Interviewer: The Mother-in-law Kobe: Mirando “La Madrastra” y Kobe: Watching “The Mother-in-law” mirando “Sábado Gigante”. and watching “Gigantic Saturday”. Entrevistador: Ah, ¿Sábado Gigante, Interviewer: Ah, Gigantic Saturday, también? ¿En Univisión? too? On Univision?

Kobe: Claro, sí. Kobe: Of course, yes.

Entrevistador: Nosotros que estamos Interviewer: We that are on this side, de este lado, extrañamos mucho a we miss “Black Mamba” a lot. Does “Black Mamba”. ¿Black Mamba Black Mamba also now miss the NBA también extraña ahora la NBA y el and playing? jugar?

Kobe: Eh, no. Porque para 20 años que juego en el NBA… fue un sueño para mí. Pero ahora, tengo que hacer una cosa nueva. No puedo pensar en lo que… que hizo. Tengo que hacer una cosa...algo más. Cuando juego ahora, juego solamente con mis hijas. Me encanta jugar así. Pero para 20 años... mi cuerpo no lo extraña. Mentalmente, no lo extraño. Pero cuando juego con mis hijas, es una cosa que es pura, y cuando estoy jugando con ellas, lo extraño. Entrevistador: Y justamente, parte de tu día debe ser jugar con tus niños. ¿Cómo llenas el resto del diá ahora que no tienes el basquetbol?

Kobe: Me despierto, hago [el] desayuno para mis hijas, y después vamos en el carro para ir a la escuela… y vengo a trabajar aquí, en mi oficina. Entonces mis dias son muy…laboro, trabajo mucho en el día, pero con mi familia puedo… Es diferente porque cuando estaba jugando en el NBA, los schedules, no tengo control…para [la] Navidad, siempre [estaba] trabajando. Pero ahora tengo control. [Estoy] siempre ahí con mis hijas ahora. Entrevistador: Se te ve feliz--de que tienes todo este tiempo libre, ¿no? Kobe: Paz. En Paz.

Kobe: Eh, no. Because for the 20 years that I played in the NBA…it was a dream for me. But now, I have to do something new. I can’t think about what…what I did. I have to do something...something more. When I play now, I only play with my daughters. I love to play like that. But [after] 20 years ... my body doesn’t miss it. Mentally, I don’t miss it. But when I play with my daughters, it is something pure, and when I’m playing with them, I miss it.

Interviewer: And precisely, part of your day must be playing with your kids. How do you fill the rest of your day now that you don’t have basketball?

Kobe: I wake up, I make breakfast for my daughters, and afterwards we go in the car to go to school…and I come to work here, in my office. So, my days are very ... I work, I work a lot in the day, but with my family I can... It's different because when I was playing in the NBA, the schedules, I [didn’t] have control…for Christmas I was always working. But now I have control. I am now always there with my daughters.

Interviewer: You look happy— because you have all this free time, no? Kobe: Peace. In peace

As you can see from the transcript above, Kobe made some minor Spanish grammatical mistakes (the words in red). However, he was able to hold a long complex conversation with William Delgado Gil, a native Spanish speaker. Do you think the interviewer thought less of him because of those language mistakes? No. Even when the wrong word or tense was used, the interviewer knew exactly what was meant and so the conversation continued fluently. I hope that this dialogue from one of the world’s most admired sportsmen inspires you to continue (or take up) learning the Spanish language. You may watch the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n7vEr4Ey_U

I will see you next week.

¡Chao!