There are three types of people in a foreign country: the confident ones who throw words around with wild abandon and hope for the best, the silent ones who nod a lot and pray not to be spoken to, and the ones who think they’re in category one until they ask a waiter for a plate of suffering instead of a glass of water.
Guess which one I was.
Learning Spanish wasn’t a romantic choice. Not at first. It was practical. I’d moved. I needed groceries. I needed a SIM card. I needed to know if I was buying milk or bleach. But slowly—very slowly—it became something else. Not quite love. But the gateway to writing about it better.
Because language—real, messy, imperfect language—is the heart of every romance. And not just the te amo–I love you declarations. It’s in the misunderstandings. The almosts. The hesitations. The silences. It’s in what’s left unsaid.
Flirting in a Foreign Tongue
My first attempt at flirting in Spanish was tragic. I complimented a man’s dog and somehow ended up asking if he’d like to adopt me. He said no, but he did buy me a coffee.
There’s something incredibly exposing about trying to be charming in a language you barely speak. Your usual shields—wit, sarcasm, timing—are gone. You’re left with the basics: smiles, gestures, eye contact, and raw sincerity. And that, it turns out, is exactly what writing romance needs.
Characters strip down emotionally. They expose themselves (not like that—well, sometimes like that). They get words wrong. They say too little or too much. They talk past each other, miss signals, panic and overcompensate. It’s all there. Love is a language and half the story is two people trying to figure out if they’re speaking the same one.
The Words We Fumble
I once wrote a scene where a woman couldn’t find the words to tell someone she missed him, so she left a jar of his favourite marmalade on his doorstep. He understood. Or maybe he didn’t. That was the point. Love isn’t about clarity. It’s about trying.
And learning Spanish taught me exactly that. I’d stand in line rehearsing what I was going to say at the bakery, get to the front, panic, and blurt out something about oranges. The woman behind the counter would smile and correct me. Every day, a little less wrong. Every day, a little more seen.
Isn’t that what we all want? To be understood eventually?
Subtitles, Subtext, and Everything in Between
Romance thrives in subtext. And subtext is a form of translation. One of my favourite things about writing bilingual characters is watching them slip. A word too formal. A joke that doesn’t land. A phrase that doesn’t exist in the other person’s culture. It’s delicious.
And it mirrors real life. I fell for someone once because of how they listened. Because they waited while I stumbled through a thought. Because they didn’t finish my sentence for me, even though they could have. They let me find it. That’s intimacy. That’s chemistry. That’s what I try to write.
Saying the Hard Things
Love stories always hit that moment—the moment—where someone has to say something hard. “I’m scared.” “I’m sorry.” “I love you.” Saying it in another language strips you of finesse. But it also strips you of performance. No flourishes. No deflections. Just the words, bare and hopeful.
I think that’s why I keep learning. Because it reminds me what it feels like to be honest.
Writing With an Accent
No matter how fluent I get, I’ll always have an accent. Always trip over the odd word. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s the whole point. Writing about love with an accent means remembering that it’s never perfect. That it’s messy and unrehearsed and mostly about the effort.
Characters miscommunicate. They overshare. They say the wrong thing and then try to fix it with cake. And readers, like lovers, forgive them. Because we’ve all been there. At the bakery. Holding oranges. Trying to find the words.