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