Me and Spanish

"You are so proud, you think you don't need a dictionary.  

It is like, 'Shut up.  You're killing the Espanish language.'"

-Daniel, my host home brother

Daniel

I get some variation of this quote at least once a day.  Oh, how I wish it weren't so.  How I wish I could speak without betraying that I am not from around these parts.  Alas.

In language learning, if you are really learning a language, you will often make a fool out of yourself.  It's just part of the process.  If you aren't making mistakes, it's only because you aren't trying.  Instead of lamenting my fate of looking like a fool, I will give you a compilation of some of my favorite mistakes that I have made in Language here in Spain.  For all of you aspiring fools-to-be who want to study abroad, here are ** general ways to make yourself look silly speaking a different language.

1.  Invent meaningless words based on existing grammar patterns.  You know the grammar patterns.  You know that if you add -ador to the end of the verb, you get someone who is a doing of the verb.  Unfortunately, the word you spoke is gibberish.  I have come up with several gems through this process.  Among them are 'mentirador,' 'cantador,' and 'cancionar.'  I thought that they respectively meant 'liar,' 'singer', and 'to sing.'  As it turns out, they really don't mean anything.  Curiously, my family understood what I was getting at because I used pretty good inferencing into the Spanish language in order to derived the words.  Unfortunately, this just made the mistake funnier.  Good times.

2.  Use an English word and hope they have a Spanish equivalent.  Spanish and English are mildly close.  There exist lots of words like 'carro' and 'gasolina.'  Unfortunately, it doesn't work all the time.  I tried this with my new word 'expensivo.'  Unfortunately, there is no such a word in Spanish as 'expensivo.'  My host family died laughing.  I tried it with 'terrifico' later on.  Although 'terrifico' doesn't exist, 'terrorifico' does.  Unfortunately it means horrifying. This was not exactly the sentiment I was trying to convey.

3.  Forget Basic Grammar Rules.  Just because you learned a rule in Spanish I, doesn't mean that you can just forget about it.  The teacher walked into class one day and asked how we were doing.  I told her I was 'Buenisimo,' the Spanish word for very good.  Nothing big there.  Learned that word freshman year of high school.  Yet the teacher started to look at me pretty strangely after I said this.  If you say that you are 'buenisimo,' you've just said that you are extremely good looking.  Should've listened a bit closer to the teacher in high school.

4.  Fail to pay attention to the conversation and say something egregiously stupid.  Okay, so this could happen to you in your native language.  But it can definitely happen to you in your second language as well.  I was coming out of a day dream in class when I heard the Spanish teacher asking about boyfriends and girlfriends.  I responded boyfriend because the character in the narrative did have a boyfriend.  She was not asking about the story, but was asking about our personal lives.  Ouch.  I just told the class that I had a boyfriend.  The teacher was very supportive though.  She told me that gay marriage was legal here in Spain.  The best part about this was that it occurred on the same day I told my teacher I was super good looking.  

5.  Mispronounce the bits that sound the same to you.  I wanted a pear.  I asked my host mom for a 'perra.'  This word is Spanish for a prostitute and a female dog.  My host mom was quick to tell me that I wanted a 'pera' instead of a 'perra.'

I could go on all day here with my numerous Spanish errors.  I think one of the things I'm getting out of all of these mistakes is not to fear looking silly.  Life happens, and sometimes you say ridiculous things by accident.  When I get back to the United States, I look forward to not using as an excuse the fact that I don't want to look silly speaking Spanish.

Hasta banana

My new favorite Spanish word

I was reading through some of Daniel's books today when I came across a copy of the Silmarillion in Spanish.  I was reading the jacket of the book when I came across this gem: El Señor Oscuro.  Spanish for the Dark Lord.

 

El Señor Oscuro

Needless to say, I was absolutely delighted to find this.  I started celebrating by loudly proclaiming my dark Lordship over the household.  I laughed maliciously at the pathetic fate of all who crossed my path.  When Daniel and Carlos started looking at me funny, I shot fire from my fingertips at them.  For all of you unaware of the technical aspects of shooting fire from your fingertips, all you need to do is point your fingers at the object you are about to obliterate and make a loud hissing noise.  The hissing is to signify the said objects immanent doom, of course.  

Me shooting fire from my fingertips

As it was just my first day on the job as Dark Lord, the fire from the fingertips didn't quite work out.  Daniel and Carlos really started looking at me funny at this point.  Maybe I need to go to a Dark Lord workshop in Utumno or Mordor somewhere. 

Location of the next Dark Lord convention

 As the fire didn't work, I summoned all the minions from the shadows to come and get them.  I got 'shadows' (tinieblas) from Psalms about a week ago.  My minions seemed to like the deep shadows just fine and didn't come out.  The maid started laughing at me so I tried extra hard to obliterate her via fire from my fingertips.  At this point, Daniel told me to quit murdering the Spanish language and started laughing at me.  Though I guess I have a bit of work today before I rule the world with the powers of a Dark Lord, I think today was a good start.  My family definitely seemed to get a kick out of me trying to be a Dark Lord.  Maybe next time.

Hasta Banana!

An American in Toledo

For the longest time, I thought that the relationship between Spain and its American tourists was like a lichen.  A lichen is a composite organism that consists of both plant and fungus.  Using the analogy, it could be said that Spain is the plant, the part the gives color to the organism and produces food from the raw ingredients, and American tourists are the part that gives the ingredients to the organism for photosynthesis.  Although the Americans are necessary for the life of the organism, they are still a fungus and heavily resented by the Spanish.  (It came out in my head better than on paper).

figure 1: Lichen.
I hope you are taking notes.  The test is
 at the end of this post and will cover all
material in this blog from this post back.

Turns out that I was pretty wrong about the lichen thing.  And not just stylistically!  Spain does abhor tourists for the most part.  If you could listen in on a conversation amongst Spaniards, they would bad mouth tourists in general given the chance.  But though they don't really like tourists in general, they sure do love to help out tourists who come up to them and ask them questions in Spanish.  Case in point: Toledo yesterday.  I woke up at 7am with pretty much no clue of how I was going to get to Toledo from Alcala.  My host mom woke up at the same time to help me.  I didn't even ask for her to wake up, but she did.  She even gave me a banana for the road.  Malcolm and I got on the first bus that my Mom told us about, and I got to talking in Spanish to the guy sitting next to me.  He turned out to be Brazil and had only started living in Spain 5 months.  He needed to find work so he moved to Spain.  A little aside, Spain has a 20% unemployment rate.  It is 40% among the youth.  If you have to move to Spain to find work, you are in bad shape.  We got off at Madrid together, and I asked him what Malcolm and I needed to do.  He patiently showed us how to buy train tickets to the next stop.  He could have been late for work because he showed us how to find the ticket office.

Our friend from the bus who helped us out

Once we got to the new station Malcolm and I were completely lost.  Once again, we asked a Spanish lady for help, and she painstakingly navigated us through the train system to the equally confusing bus station.  While she could have just given us directions and left, instead she took the time to baby us through the ridiculously complex train system.  Without her, we would have been stuck a lot longer.

On the way back, it was the same problem.  American tourists lost in the train station.  Turns out they don't sell tickets in the return station.  We would have been walking home to Alcala had not a security guard came and showed us how to get out.  She was from Bulgaria and spoke 4 different languages.  She took us to the right stop, waited 10 minutes for the bus we got on, and told the bus driver to let us on even though we didn't have tickets.  Malcolm and I were pretty dumbfounded at how nice Spaniards are to helpless American tourists who can speak adequate Spanish.  I could keep going on and on about how kind Spaniards have been to me once they found out that I can speak pretty good Spanish.  The last two people who helped us out were also students going to Alcala.  They showed us the right bus station and walked us there.  I am exeedingly grateful for the largess of the Spanish people towards the helpless tourist.  Without them, Malcolm and I would still be in Spain looking for how to get back to Alcala.  I would say that the relationship between Spain and Spanish speaking tourists is like algae and really cool fungi.  That is probably a better comparison.

Oh, and Toledo was gorgeous.  Toledo was greatly influenced by Jewish, Arabic, and Christian culture.  As a result, the architecture is fantastic.

Not only were the people friendly in Toledo, but the
streets are made of pure silver and shine like the sun.

The second largest cathedral in Spain is locate in Toledo.  It was kind of hard to miss given that it is the second largest cathedral in Spain.  It took 260 years for the church to be completed, not including the artwork inside after the completion of the building.  The stain glass windows took 100 years.  So much time was put into the church.  It wasn't just the fancy stuff that took a while either.  The church had these steel bars separating one room from another.  It took 7 years for the master steel smiths to complete it.  Given all the massive delays, I think it was worth the wait.  The church stands today as a masterpiece of Gothic artwork.  Needless to say, the church looked pretty groovy.

The Cathedral of Toledo.  Very gorgeous.

If I had a dollar for every massive cathedral
in Toledo, I would have one dollar.
-Patrick Starfish

We also got to see some ridiculously big doors in Toledo too.  I'm pretty sure they are Muslim inspired.  The Synagogue in Toledo was beautiful.  I absolutely love Hebrew writing.  It is more like art to me than language. Most likely this is because I cannot read Hebrew.  The staff at the synagogue also let us in for free.  Definite props for that.

Considering that people back in the middle ages
were all 20 feet tall, this was actually a
medium sized door.  

Though the buildings were all so gorgeous, I think that my favorite part of the architecture was the city streets.  The streets were narrow and crooked.  When you walked through them, It was like going back in time to the medieval era.  Like giant works of art, the streets gracefully canvassed the city.  I have never seen anything like it in my entire life.

I could live here the rest of my life.

Malcolm chilling in the ridiculously
beautiful alleys of Toledo. 

Unfortunately for the people who there, the exquisite narrow street of Toledo are the same streets that they have to drive their cars in.  Whenever cars would go down the lanes, Malcolm and I would have to press up against the walls to avoid being flattened.  It was almost laughable seeing cars driving through the city.

Ouch.

One of the most memorable events in Toledo was the siesta.  Malcolm and I were dying by about 4 in the afternoon.  It just so happens that if you have to wake up early to catch a bus and walk around all day, you get tired.  We decided that instead of suffering for the rest of the day, we could just get a siesta and be reenergized.  We thought of this idea while sitting on a museum bench.  Malcolm and I were sorely tempted to just go to sleep in the museum, but instead decided to go to a park.  We took a trip to the park in Toledo and napped for about 2 hours on the bench.  Not too many people came by and gawked at us.  I just hope I wasn't snoring.

Figure 2: Malcolm and I dying one the museum bench.
I hope you have been paying attention.

Looking back on Toledo, I am pretty spellbound by the beauty of the ancient city.  I could come back again for years and not know all their is to know about the gorgeous city.  It was one of my most interesting days here in Spain.

After I get my first million teaching English as a
second language in Korea, I'm definitely buying
that house.

Did I mention that I liked the streets in Toledo?

Test
Write your answers below and turn them in to me tomorrow.

1.  How many times has the phrase 'Turns out' or any functional equivalent been used to start a sentence in this blog?
2.  In a gentle yet firm letter to the author, describe how bad the lichen simile was.
3.  What is the difference between a simile and a metaphor?
4.  If you are canoeing down the street and all the wheels fall off, how many pancakes does it take to roof a doghouse?
5.  Did I mention that I liked the streets in Toledo?

It is 3 in the morning and I have class tomorrow.  Why do I always finish writing my blogs at ridiculously late hours in the night?  No clue.  Thanks for stopping by and reading this!

Hasta Banana!
Ottpocket

Bonus knowledge

After seeing this ad, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be a Domino's customer the rest of my life.

First Week

It has been about a week since I got here in beautiful Alcala.  I have learned so much more than I can say, but since it's my blog I guess I will give it a shot.  Here is a list of some of the things I have learned here in Spain.

Mississippi State goes to Alcala

1.  Navigation is pretty hard.  For those who know me, I have a pretty hard time with directions.  The record right now for times getting lost in a single day is now at 3 times.  I found out the hard way that I my map wouldn't help me out too much if I leave it in my room.  On a more positive note, as my house is about 1 kilometer away from school, I will be pretty fit by the end of this trip if I keep getting lost all the time
2.  The mountains are beautiful.  A group of us decided to go up to the mountains and hike a couple days back.  The mountains are located in the Cerros national park, only about a twenty minute walk away from my house.  The trail we took was a 10 kilometer (6 mile) trek to the top of the highest mountain in the park.  About half way up the trail, I got separated from my group.  My phone had ran out of minutes, so I could not call my group and get any of their water.  I figured that I would see them on top of the mountain, so I kept pressing on until I was there.  Except they weren't there.  I had missed a trail and had accidentally climbed the second tallest mountain.  I was pretty freaked out at this point because I had no group or water.  I knew there was water at the base of the park, so I headed down to find it.

Me on top of the second tallest mountain in Alcala  

Going down the mountain, I was mostly sure I knew where I was going.  Mostly sure is not that reassuring when it means you might might have a heat stroke because you were almost on the right trail.  Fortunately, there were other hikers on the trail to guide me down.  In particular, I was helped by a man named Lino.  Lino is about 60 years old and was running and walking up the mountain.  He knew were the water was, so we run walked towards it.  I am to God for people like Lino who helped me out on the mountain that day.  I might not have made it out otherwise.  Next time, I will not get separated from the group.

Me and Lino

3.  Don't greet people you don't know on the street.  You are walking towards a stranger who is in turn walking towards you.  Once you get about 5 feet away, you wave and say hi as you pass, right?  Nope.  In Alcala, people consider it very strange when some random person just greets them when they pass by on the street.  I am still reeling from the culture shock on this one.  I've gotten a lot a weird stares for this one.


4.  Some times you get to use the words you never thought you would use.  One of my favorite Spanish words is fregadero.  It is Spanish for 'kitchen sink.'  In grade school, I laughed when my brother told me he needed to know this word for a test.  It seemed fairly pointless to me.  That is, until  two days ago.  I was in a restaurant and I wanted some tap water.  I started to think about how to say it.  After a while, the answer hit me: agua(water) de fregadero!  I asked the waiter for agua de fregadero, and he gave me tap water.  Bam! Just that easy.  As it turns out, I wasn't exactly right about what agua de fregadero meant.  It really means dishwater, but I did get my (clean) water.
5.  You don't learn Spanish by magic.  I came to Spain with the interesting misconception that I would just pick up Spanish by osmosis.  By hearing a whole lot of people talking Spanish, I would somehow apprehend it perfectly after a while.  That has in no way described my experiences in Spain.  It has taken me a lot of work to improve my Spanish here in Spain.  I have to constantly be thinking about grammar as I speak to people around me.  As I walk down the city streets, I have to train my mind to think in Spanish.  Constantly, I am fighting to keep my thoughts in Spanish.  Although the constant feedback from native Spanish speakers makes learning Spanish faster, I still have to work pretty hard to not sound like an ignoramus.  That coming from a man who's taken 8 years of school Spanish.

6.  The graffiti is everywhere.  Graffiti is common and highly visible in Alcala.  If there is a store that has been vacated, it will have graffiti, guaranteed.

Just business as usual here in Spain

 

While most of the graffiti is done on walls or abandoned buildings, many live businesses have graffiti-like artwork on them.  Many businesses have paid for artists to spraypaint murals on their doors.  I am glad they did, as it makes the city look amazing.

On the door of a bike shop

Jimi Hendrix a la Che Guevara.
On the Louisianna Rock Cafe

7.  Planning trips is pretty hard.  It takes a lot of work to get trips off the ground.  Malcolm, Margrett, and I decided we wanted to go to Toledo.  It would be a day trip so we would only need to buy bus tickets.  All three of us looked for hours on the internet and in the train stations for any information about this stuff to no avail.  Not even on the official government site.  We each decided that we would show up together at 8 tomorrow and hope that the magic happens.  By magic I refer to us actually making it to Toledo and back.  I gotta admit that it would be quite comical for us to make it to Toledo and not be able to make it back.  It would make for some pretty great stories.  Thankfully, my host my set me straight on a lot of the things.  In about 20 minutes, she did what we couldn't do in 3 hours.


Well I got to stop now.  It is 4:15 in the morning here in Spain, and more importantly, I have run out of original interjections to add in my paper.  I wake up in 2 hours to figure out some last minute Toledo stuff.  If I survive it, I might just have some pictures for you.  Just saying.

Me and my bros Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

Hasta banana!

-Ottpocket

Hola Spain

Hola personas!

It is now Sunday, 2 days since I flew out from Jackson to Alcala.  Needless to say, I have been up to more than a little bit.  The journey from Jackson to Madrid took somewhere around 15 hours.  The flight across the Atlantic was actually pretty awesome.  I was quite taken aback when they offered people in 2nd class wine for refreshment.  It served as a sort of welcome to Europe for me.  Though I did not sleep much, I had a great time talking to the very cool Delta flight attendants.  

I had been nervous for quite a while about my host family.  For you unawares, I will be spending my two months in Spain with a random family that takes me in.  My worries were completely unfounded.  When I was introduced to the family, we all had a great time.  There are three people in the family: the mother Gema and her sons Daniel and Carlos.  Daniel and Gema picked me up from the bus.  I was quite surprised when Daniel started speaking to me in fluent English.  Turns out that Spain has a pretty good educational system.  We discussed philosophy (which is a mandatory high school subject in Spain) all the way home where Daniel entertained me with his guitar playing.  Unfortunately I left my piano back home so I couldn't serenade my host home.  On a more positive note, I did get to make up words to a flamenco song Daniel played.  I loudly sung about my grandfather (first word I could think of in Spanish) to the family.  We had a really good time hanging out and being goofy together.  Gema then cooked an exceptionally good meal of Spanish rice, beans, chicken, topped with olive oil and vinegar.  That night Carlos invited me to play soccer with him that night.  Needless to say, I have a the best host home in the whole world.    

My new family: (l to r) Daniel, Gema, Carlos

 

Why yes, I do know that I have a farmer's tan.

That night I got to go hang out with some friends and eat Spanish food.  After spending an inordinate amount of time buying cell phones, we went to eat at a Tapas Bar.  Tapas are places that serve appetizers only.  We all ate a bunch of good Spanish appetizers and enjoyed life together.  Lots of good times to be had by all.  That night I got the first good night's sleep in a long while.  By that time, I had only slept one hour in the past day and a half.  

Me taking a nap in Movistar phone company.  Unfortunately for me,
 Europeans traditionally do not fall asleep in phone stores.   

Sunday morning I got up and went to a Pentecostal church with Daniel.  Daniel became a Christian 4 months ago.  He told me that most of the Spanish youth are Christian in name only or don't care about religion.  When he converted, he lost most of his friends because of his faith.  After hearing all of this, I was amazed at 1) how joyful he was despite this and 2) how much he loved Christ regardless of what others thought.  As a Christian, I felt more than a little bit challenged to be live my life completely for Christ.  In church, I was largely clueless as to what was being said, but I did catch understand all of the scriptures.  Whenever the pastor would read something, I knew what the passage spoke about because I have read through the Bible in English.  

I got out of church and Bible study at 5pm.  I was surprised about that too.  Though It was long, I was very  glad to be there.  The main service lasted from 10 until 2.  At 2, Daniel, a friend of his, and I went to eat food.  His friend was wearing a shirt in Spanish that said that he had survived a roundhouse kick to the face by Chuck Norris.  Chuck Norris is revered worldwide it seems.  After lunch we had a bible study from 3 until 4:45.   After church, I mostly just talked with my family.  As it is 2:15 and I have class tomorrow, I think I will call it a night.  

Hasta la Vista,

Ottpocket

So I'm going to Spain

Hey world,

Turns out I'm going to Spain in two days.  If you just continue with me in this blog for the next 2 months, you might as well be going with me.  Ok, that was a bit of an overstatement.  But I do hope you come along and enjoy the ride in Espana.

By the way,  My name is Andrew Ott.  I am a Spanish major and have studied Spanish in classrooms for around 8 years.  Language has interested me since I started taking it in 9th grade.  Language is arbitrary yet highly structured.  It is random yet one of the primary vehicles used to convey thought.  I would like to further acquaint myself with the Spanish language by going over to Spain.  More than just the language, I would like to discover more about the Spanish culture.  To be able to speak someone's language yet not understand their culture is to be unable to communicate with that person.  For example, the people of Morocco do not use or understand sarcasm.  If you tried to communicate a something to a citizen of Morocco by using sarcasm, they would be utterly lost.  Even if you spoke in perfect Arabic.  As I am in Spain, I desire to know more clearly what it means to be Spanish.

I guess I need to get back to packing.  I seem to have lost my passport somewhere.  If I can just find it I won't have to stow away.  I guess that would add an interesting dynamic to this whole trip, though.


Hasta banana!  (Spanish for: until banana!)