The Capybara Effect

One evening, I don’t remember how many years ago, I was helping my mom cook dinner while Jeopardy was playing on TV. A prompt came up that mentioned something about the world’s largest rodent, and one of the contestants responded—correctly—with: “What is capybara?” My mom and I looked at each other, confused. Capybara? We had never heard of such a thing. We immediately googled it and were delighted with images of the giant rodent lounging riverside with crocodiles.

In the weeks and months that followed, we continued to stumble across references to capybaras in the most unexpected ways. It felt absolutely uncanny every time. We had only just learned about these absurd creatures, and suddenly they were cropping up everywhere. This phenomenon—coming across something repeatedly after hearing about it for the first time—became known in our family as “the capybara effect.”

The capybara effect feels like magic. It’s the eerie, shivery sensation of unexpected synchronicity. It’s that little spike of dopamine you get when you notice something in your environment that your brain flags as significant. It makes you stop in your tracks and perk your ears up. It’s as if the universe is winking at you.

Usually, the capybara effect is a pretty rare phenomenon. But when immersed in a foreign language, it happens all the time. I’ve lost track of how many proverbial capybaras I’ve encountered during my journey of learning Spanish. Almost every time I learn a new word, I suddenly start seeing that word everywhere. In the context of language learning, the capybara effect feels extra magical. Every time it happens, I always have to stop and wonder: How many times have I seen or heard that word before, but it simply sailed past my comprehension? It makes me realize just how much progress I’ve made. It’s proof of how far my world has expanded. The sweet surge of excitement and achievement I feel in these moments is one of the many, many reasons I love living in my second language.

For example, while reading Benito Taibo’s Persona Normal in the hostel common room one afternoon, I came across the word garra. I had learned it before, years ago, but it had long since slipped from my memory. I looked it up: claw or talon. Good to know.

A few days later, I was hanging out in the park with some friends in Baños, Ecuador, enjoying live music and watching my friends practice their circus arts. I made a few failed attempts at learning how to juggle, but I soon abandoned the juggling balls in favor of my friend’s new pet kitten, who had a penchant for shoulder-perching. My friend Javi showed me her scratch marks and warned me to be careful. Her garras are sharp, she remarked. My brain pinged with recognition. Only a few days before, my mind would have registered that word as a blank space. Now, it meant something to me. I couldn’t help but smile.

Later on, still holding the kitten, I strolled into the tiny, castle-shaped library in the middle of the park. I picked up a 3D Magic Eye book and flipped through page after page, micro-adjusting my focus until the hidden silhouettes popped out from the patterns. A few pages in, I came across an image of a hawk descending upon a fish, mighty talons extended. I re-focused my eyes to read the title of the piece: “Las Garras del Halcón.” My breath caught.

A single vocabulary word might not seem like something worth getting excited over, but when it comes to language learning, every tiny step forward counts. The process of clearing the fog from my comprehension and seeing my world in a broader spectrum of color never ceases to fill me with wonder. If the evening had happened in English, the same magic simply wouldn’t have been there. But in Spanish, conversations and events that would otherwise be fairly mundane have the potential to transform into sweet moments of micro-thrill. In my second language, I’m always living on the edge of surprise. My dopamine circuits are constantly spinning with exactly the kind of stimulation they crave. This is thanks, in part, to the capybara effect.

The day I started writing this post, I was chatting with a New Zealander at my hostel. In the corner of my eye, I saw something stir in the garden outside the window. I jumped in surprise.

“Oh, never mind, it’s just the dog,” I said.

“What did you think it was,” he responded, “a capybara or something?”