Tag: Spanish

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La Fiesta de San Juan

One thing I really love about studying español is my conversations with people in other countries. Via Skype, I can practice and sharpen my burgeoning skills (do I dare insert LOL here) with the language.  I love it because I get to learn about other countries and other cultures.  When they asked me questions about my country and culture, I sometimes see our practices, our attitudes, our beliefs in a new light, perhaps I am even forced to re-exam some of my own long held tenets. Occasionally, I am at a lost for an answer. Try explaining our gun laws to a foreigner, it somewhere between very embarrassing and impossible. As a whole, I have learned how similar we human beings can be, while appearing very different.

Via Skype, I was visiting with a young accounting student, Konrad, who lives Continue reading “La Fiesta de San Juan”

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Soy un comediante

There are a couple skills that a person needs when they start a language learning journey, but that are not mentioned in the syllabus.  One is that you need to accept making lots of mistakes and the other is that you need to be able to laugh at yourself.  It took me a while to realize this. Self-deprecating humor is my forte, but it  is difficult accepting the making of errors, partly because I am a bit of a perfectionist, ask anyone who has programmed behind me, partly because I could not laugh at myself about those mistakes, partly because I hate feeling stupid in front of someone else, it is bad enough in front of yourself.  It is the last that has flattened my Spanish learning curve, but I am somewhat more accepting of my foibles now.

I read an article on language learning sometime ago, and one of their theories was that it took 10,000 Continue reading “Soy un comediante”

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Me gustó mucho esta cita

As someone who has been studying Spanish for a while, I occasionally get frustrated with my language learning journey.  As one of my instructors said to me, “you will always speak Spanish with a Gringo accent, but if your pronunciation and grammar are correct, don’t worry about it.  The idea is to communicate.”  That I can do as long as we are not chatting about the theory of relativity, the philosophy of Descartes or other such esoteric subjects.

In my case that Gringo accent has a strong southern component to it…picture Gomer Pyle speaking Spanish, instead of “Golly, Sargent”, it is, “¡Caramba! Sargento.”  I came across this quote that I can really relate to.

“Do you know what a foreign accent is? It’s a sign of bravery.” — Amy Chua

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #2,846

yeah I know you did not ask!

Something triggered this memory today, I am not sure what.

Several years ago I started my Spanish learning journey by taking a night class at the local community college.  I did this for 3 reasons.  First, I did have a desire to learn the language.  Secondly, I was in St. Louis working a programming contract with Edward Jones. I knew absolutely no one in town.  I thought this might be a good way to meet people, and it certainly was a better way to spend my evenings than sitting home watching TV.

At the first class meeting of my first Spanish class, the teacher did what a lot of teachers do in this situation.   She went around the classroom asking people to introduce themselves and tell why they were taking Spanish.

The reader might need to know that at my heart I am  a bit of a smart aleck, and I have been told on more than one occasion that my “sense of humor” is exceeding dry.  That is foreshadowing in case you do not recognize it.

The Spanish teacher came around to me.  I introduced myself.  I then proceeded to add that the reason I was taking Spanish was because the voices in my head  were speaking in Spanish and I wanted to know what they were saying.  To me this was knee slapping funny, but it was greeted with dead silence in a room of 25 souls.  The teacher looked at me with a panicked expression on her face and quickly moved on to the next student.  It still makes me grin when I think about it.

Just as an aside, I did not find taking courses at the community college a good way to learn a language.  At least at St. Louis Community College in the adult education section they have a 10 week program whereby you meet once a week for 2 hours.  The teacher to student ratio is somewhere around 20 to 30 to 1.  It decreases as you take more advanced courses.  The problems are several, but primarily it is the 10 weeks between courses.  If you took all three sessions, fall, spring and summer, you would have 30 weeks of classes with much time in between.  2 hours a week to learn a language is better than nothing, but not much.  There is little to no coordination between the Spanish teachers on the course content.  There is very little opportunity to actually speak the language in the classroom. Frequently the teacher is not a teaching professional, but a native speaker of the language.  The native part is good, but  there needs to be some degree of education on the teaching method.  I could go on.  I took most of the Spanish courses they offered, but in retrospect it was not a good use of my learning time.

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I Want to Buy American

I was in Lowe’s the other day.   The fact that it was Lowe’s is only incidental.  It could have been any of the many big box store chains that dot Generica.

They provided to me a pretty clear snapshot of the some issues that are troubling me about American business.  It all seems to boil down to corporations being willing to sell out this country because they are more concerned about the quarterly profit statement and executive pay than anything else.

My first observation is that Spanish is nearly as prominent in the store as English.  The lettering was not quite as big as the English, but it was only a small percentage less so. Continue reading “I Want to Buy American”

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Quien es este hombre?

This is a presentation that I wrote for the beginning Spanish class I am taking.  I am not sure how this sounds to the Latino ear, but I suspect like a fifth grader’s report.  I’m just now learning to use past tenses.  I’ve discovered that Spanish has at least two past tenses while in English,  if it is past it is past.

Yo tengo mucho interés en este personaje histórico, porque su hermana, Hanna, es mi abuela hace seis generaciones.

Él  tiene tumbas de los estados de Missouri y Kentucky, y  ambos de los estados afirmaran que está enterrado allí.

Él  nació en 1734 (mil setecientos treinta y cuatro) en el condado de Berks de la colonia de Pensilvana. Sus padres eran cuáqueros. Una de sus hijas se casó con un hombre que no estuvo cuáqueros.  Porque del matrimonio fue una controversia en la comunidad de cuáqueros. Se desilusionó con la religión. Él paró a ir a la iglesia.  Sin embargo consideraba sí mismo un cristiano todavía y bautizó a todos sus hijos.

Él  había poca educación formal. Continue reading “Quien es este hombre?”

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Adding a second language

I’m in the process of trying to learn/relearn Italian.  Many moons ago I lived in Italy for 3 years during my Jr. High years.  I was never fluent, but I spoke enough to not be cheated in the markets and play with the Italian kids.

I would like to revisit the country for an extended period, and go to places off of tourist road.  So that is my motivation for studying the language.

I asked an Indian friend of my mine who is bilingual about language.   He has been in the USA for 7 years, and of course, English is widely spoken in India.  I was wondering about whether he thought in English, dreamed in English, did he need to translate English to his native tongue, etc.  Below is his well thought out answer: Continue reading “Adding a second language”

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Papa Deo / Papa Day-o?

Back in the day when I was married, my wife “bedopted” a little girl, Lindsey, almost from birth.  We really did not have custody of her, but her mother had issues she was working through.  The child was in our home nearly as much as she was in her mother’s for several years.

We also had a cassette tape (remember those) of children’s songs by Raffi.  Lindsey loved Raffi and we would play it for her whenever we were in the car.  Me being who I am loved to sing along on the Banana Boat song, probably because I could bellow “day-o” at the top of my voice.  Lindsey began to call be Papa Deo.  Continue reading “Papa Deo / Papa Day-o?”

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Press 1 for English – a little progress

If you read my early post “Press 1 for English, NO Thanks” you might remember my frustration at calling to activate my credit card and being forced to select 1 for English or 2 for Spanish.  I did neither and called the Customer Service number to get my card activated.  While I had them on the phone I gave them an earful about the activation line not defaulting to English after a set period of time.

Well the card expired and they sent me a new one.  Again I had to have the card activated.  I was prepared to go through the whole scenario once more.    When the automated process picked up it told me to “Press 1 for English or Prensa dos a continuar en espanol.”    I did neither again, but much to my delight after a short pause the automated process continued in ENGLISH.

I do not know if my complaint was the impetus, or maybe several complaints, but I do know it is changed.

Sometimes the little man does win a small victory.