Colombia: six years, two cities, one accent I still miss.

I moved to Bogotá for a degree and stayed for six years. The first year I spoke Spanish. The second year I started speaking Colombian.

Those are not the same thing. Speaking a language means you can be understood. Living inside one means you know which register to use with the woman who runs the shop downstairs, and that it is not the register you use with your professor, and that both of them are warmer than anything you learned in class.

Bogotá taught me the polite half. Usted for almost everyone, ¿Quiubo? for friends, and an apology reflex — ¡Qué pena! — that Colombians attach to absolutely everything, including things that are not remotely their fault.

Then I moved to the coast, to Santa Marta, and had to learn to hear again. Coastal Spanish drops the ends of words and runs the middles together. For a month I understood less than I had understood in my first month in the country. Then my ear caught up and the coast became the place I felt most at home.

The turning point was not grammar. It was the first time someone called me parce without thinking about it. You cannot study your way to that. You get it by staying, by being wrong out loud, and by letting people correct you.

Six years later my Turkish has a Colombian rhythm in it somewhere. I do not want it back the way it was. That accent is the receipt for a life.