Putting an End to Language Barriers : Informal Gatherings in Tijuana Lead to New Ideas, Friends

It is a group without leaders, without even a name. It has no dues or minutes.

But its members meet every Wednesday evening at a restaurant in Tijuana--and have for six years. Roughly half are Mexicans, the other half Americans.

Most come to practice a foreign language and, secondarily, to socialize with friends. Others consider the emphasis to be reversed--but then it wouldn’t be the group it is if it had any structure.

It might best be summed up as a cross between a language class and a no-host cocktail party. And, as you might expect, grammar and syntax aren’t the only things learned.

Anne Marie Kaukonen, a middle-aged travel agent from Coronado, uses the group primarily to practice the Spanish she speaks with her Mexican clients. But after an hour or two of conversation, she often leads members to a local nightclub for dancing.

David Dennstedt, 35, an independent real-estate developer in San Diego, originally came because he wanted to learn how to speak Spanish. Then he met a certain Mexican woman at one of the meetings. The wedding’s in May. Meanwhile, Dennstedt and his fiancee still attend the meetings regularly.

Patricia Garcia Garcia, 25, a secretary for a Mexican company that manufactures elevators, practices her English at the weekly meetings; she often uses it at work to speak with customers. But she has become close friends with members of the group on both sides of the border and calls them from time to time just to chat.

Glenn Haight, 35, comes primarily to socialize.

Friendships Primary

“Originally, the idea of speaking Spanish kept me coming back,” said Haight, owner of Bonanza Corvette, a used-car dealership in downtown San Diego. “But as friendships have developed, that (original purpose) has become secondary.”

Haight helped found the group along with a few other Americans and Mexicans who met while studying at a private language school in San Diego. They agreed that it would be a good idea to get together socially for language practice, but only four people showed up for the first meeting at Montgomery Field in 1981, Haight recalled.

After that, the group met at the Tijuana Cultural Center and then at various restaurants in Tijuana. Meeting in Tijuana has helped the group attract more people, Haight said, particularly Mexicans, who can thereby avoid crossing the border in heavy evening traffic (the group’s meetings begin around 8 p.m.). Southbound border traffic is usually light in the evenings, he said.

For the last eight months, the group has met in an upstairs banquet room of El Abajeno, a restaurant in Tijuana’s new Rio District. On some nights as many as 40 or 50 people show up, but 20 or 30 is more typical. They sit at long tables, drinking beer and munching tortilla chips while conversation in Spanish and English blossoms on all sides.

“It just flows,” said one regular.

“I think the reason the group works so well is because there’s no structure to it,” Haight said. “There are no dues, no membership. You can speak a foreign language if you care to, but you don’t have to. And it’s not cliquish at all.”

Kaukonen agreed that the group “has no structure at all. You come or you don’t come--it doesn’t matter. You don’t commit yourself to anything.”

Despite its lack of structure, the group provides excellent language practice, according to Kaukonen.

“I speak a lot of Spanish with my clients, but it tends to be limited to business. And it’s when you gossip and philosophize in another language that your vocabulary really increases,” she pointed out.

“I rarely speak anything but Spanish when I’m at the meetings. Some Americans come just for socializing and don’t speak any Spanish at all, but I try to discourage them from coming back.

“The group is especially for people who are serious about learning Spanish. You have to have a commitment (to learning), even if you’re not an advanced student.”

Most are not as advanced as Kaukonen, who studied Spanish at a university in Switzerland and later became fluent while working as a travel agent in Venezuela. Dennstedt is more typical; he had studied beginning Spanish for only two months when he started coming to the group’s meetings 2 1/2 years ago.

“I’m essentially fluent now,” said Dennstedt. “The social atmosphere puts more pressure on you to learn than a class does. You’ve got to learn if you want to communicate.”

“It gives you real practice,” added Tom Webber, 42, a San Diego Spanish teacher who has attended the group’s meetings off and on for three years. “In a classroom, no important messages are conveyed. The instructions all relate to the class itself--you learn how to say things like, ‘Pick up your pencil,’ or, ‘Pretend we’re in Tijuana at a factory.’

“In the group, you learn words and phrases that you have to say in the real world. It’s real communication.”

Language is not the only thing learned, either. As Dennstedt pointed out, the group’s members tend to acquire a better understanding of cultural differences between Mexicans and Americans, too.

The Mexicans “are much more religious than we are,” he said, “and way more conservative socially.”

First Date Without Chaperon

For instance, Dennstedt made a date with one of the group’s Mexican members, Eunice Garcia Pardo, to play tennis. Later he learned it was the first date any woman in her family had ever been on without a chaperon.

But it worked out all right. Dennstedt and Garcia Pardo are engaged to be married--which will make them the fourth couple to get married after meeting through the group.

Garcia Pardo, 20, said she originally came to the Wednesday evening meetings because she wanted to learn English as well as the culture and customs of Americans. “After I met David, I came because of him,” she said with a laugh.

Meanwhile, her English improved, and so did her knowledge of Americans.

“Mexican men and American men think almost alike,” she said. “But women are much more liberated in the United States than they are in Mexico.”

Mistakes ‘Good Practice’

Garcia Garcia added that “the American is always trying to be a perfectionist. The majority are very punctual, meticulous.”

She said she has been coming to the group’s meetings for four years. “The first time I was here I was afraid to say even, ‘How are you?’ in English,” she recalled. “Now I’m not afraid to make a mistake. It’s good practice.”

Like many of those in the group, she attends the meetings nearly every week and looks forward to them for their social as well as educational aspects. It’s almost impossible for friends to get her to do anything else on Wednesday night, she said.

“It’s great because it breaks up the week,” agreed Dennstedt. “Besides, learning a language is like playing a musical instrument. You’ve got to practice. . . .

“I never would have learned Spanish without the group.”

He might never have gotten married, either.