I was fighting my way down a crowded San Jose street the other day when I had to stop and laugh out loud. Directly across from me was a store called “Robus,” and while that is just a catchy name in Spanish I couldn’t help but think “Rob Us!” And then I felt very clever for having an inside joke with a street sign, because I was the only one that knew what it meant in another language.
But this won’t last long – absolutely everyone here is learning English. I’m fluent in Spanish, but storekeepers wait on me in English just to practice. That’s good – in a tourism-based economy, English equals opportunity – but I always have to wonder how many non-Spanish speakers come through my little backwoods town. On the rare occasion that I see one, I always have an urge to go up and ask, “are you lost?”
Learning a new language is always uncomfortable. After 8 years of Spanish classes, I’d managed to forget the horror that was Spanish I. Recently I started teaching English to beginners, and I’ve realized that the one really suffering is the teacher – what do you do after eight weeks when the students are still saying “They is…”? And how do you explain grammar except “just because”?
Example:
Student: Why do you say, “Where does she live?” Why not, “Where she live?”
Me: Just because.
My students are learning very little English; I’m learning I may not be cut out to be a teacher. (It’s a sign of their dedication to learning English that they’ll hire a completely inexperienced teacher like me. They found out I was from the states and asked if I could start the next day.)
Also, there’s a huge range of sounds in English that just don’t exist in Spanish: “th” and “sh” are just two. We’ve spent lots of time going “bathhhhhroom” (instead of badroom) and “shhhhhoes” (not choos). The “th” is especially tough because you have to stick out your tongue, which just doesn’t come naturally Spanish speakers.
And no matter how good you get at your second language, some words will never come naturally. For example, I just can’t bring myself to pronounce hair gel they way they do in Spanish: I’d like some “hell” in my hair. Sounds perfectly acceptable to them, but I can’t pull it off with a straight face. Other words just don’t work unless you grew up pronouncing them: a town near here is called Desempareditos. God save me if I ever have to tell that one to a taxi driver.
Speaking of, taxi drivers are a breed all their own. No matter how good your Spanish, they’ll pretend not to understand if it will earn them an extra buck or two driving you in circles. Recently a driver refused to understand the street direction I gave him, and we had a long discussion about where the place was. We drove aimlessly until I figured out how to tell him the ‘local’ way: 300 meters north of the National Theater. His response: “So you do speak Spanish!” I was furious, but we got there eventually.
The best are government bureaucracies (highly valued in Latin America for the large number of people they employ simply to refer you to someone else). You go in, and you have to fight your way through at least a half-dozen people before you get to the person you actually need. All this takes place in Spanish, and you usually get wrong directions twice. You finally arrive, frustrated, bewildered, and preparing to make your plea in Spanish, and the person smiles sweetly and says, with only the slightest accent, “Can I help you?”
– Published in The Worthington News, 5/31/06 –
