Castellano
We were talking in Spanish class a few days ago about what we’d be willing to sell our souls to the devil for. My partner was a Finnish girl who, like me, couldn’t imagine anything she could want enough to warrant selling her soul. But some less young class members were of different viewpoints. A Chinese classmate said she’d sell her soul to have a daughter (she has only sons). A woman from Canada said she’d sell her soul for eternal youth. That seemed particularly appropriate in a language class, where each day is an attempt to recapture the language-learning abilities of childhood.
Learning the conditional tense (what would you do if you could sell your sell to the devil?) has led us into personal territory. When you can’t say complex things, you’re left talking about essentials. Thus language class has become a strange bonding ritual in which we discuss our desires and our deepest fears (although no fears until we get to the subjunctive).
My class at UBA is mostly women, but at the Spanish Language Institute in New York (where classes cost US$16.11/hr compared do US$1.56/hr here) I was in a class with 3 other men and male teacher. The teacher was Colombian, one man was from New York, one from the Netherlands, and one from India; I put myself down as being from Michigan. When we studied the subjunctive, everybody’s fears seemed to relate to women. The guy from the Netherlands was afraid he had made the wrong decision when he left his ex-girlfriend to come to the U.S. The New Yorker was afraid things wouldn’t work out when his Latin American girlfriend moved to NYC. The guy from India worried he would never find the right woman (I was in his club), and the teacher had fears about his wife. I doubt these things would have come out had we been studying calculus.
On Speaking: I try to relax and speak smoothly, but then I make a lot of mistakes. I’m reminded of when I had just started studying violin and was working on my left hand position. My teacher would have me contort my hand into the proper position and then order me to relax. Needless to say I couldn’t relax unless I gave up the correct hand position. How I eventually learned to do it, I don’t know. I just hope Spanish eventually comes to feel natural, too. Right now, I’m grateful that I can’t see myself from the perspective of a Spanish-speaker. Today, for example, I ask a friend to “arrive me” when I meant “call me.”
On Comprehension: Understanding Spanish, too, seems to require a delicate balance of attentiveness and mental looseness. If I just relax too much, the sounds just wash over me and I get nothing. If I try to catch every word, I get hung up on a phrase I almost understand and fall hopelessly behind. But if I can find the right balance, I can understand most of what people say.
My big breakthrough in comprehension came last weekend, when I was at a conference where we discussed cleaning up the Riachuelo – a river separating the central section of Buenos Aires from some nearby suburb-like communities including Avellaneda and Lanús. You can smell the sulfur-oil-vomit odor of this river from perhaps a kilometer away. Anyway, I wasn’t understanding a thing until I told myself to pretend I was in Spanish class. When I tried this, it was like I suddenly had a babelfish in my ear. Why this worked, I have no idea. The same trick doesn’t work in Spanish class, where I remain the slow kid who somehow did miraculously well on his entrance exam and is now surrounded by people with years of Spanish classes.
Of course, even when I understood what was going on, I was still in trouble at the conference when I had to speak. The “conference,” in fact, turned out to be more of a workshop. We were divided up into 20 groups of 5-10 and told to develop a management plan for the Riachuelo. I tried to make my mark as a man of few words, but on the second day one woman was particularly curious about the New York perspective. How, she wondered, had we cleaned up the Hudson River? Uh-oh.
Kate and I had one companion in our struggles with the Spanish Language – a large, hairy German named Rolf. He spoke nary a word of Spanish, and traveled everywhere with an interpreter; you can see him in the middle of the picture above, which also features Kate. He, however, was a special guest clearly brought in for the occasion by the Fondación Ciudad, a group that somehow appears to be rolling in money. Rolf spoke on the opening panel, and proposed covering lots of things (the bridge at the mouth of the Riachuelo, old factories alongside the river) with bright lights and sports logos. His proposals provoked laughter, which may or may not have been what he was going for. Although it was unclear how his projects would be funded, lighting the bridge struck me as a good way of calling attention to the Riachuelo while maintaining the historic character of La Boca, an artist’s community at the river’s mouth (I just got it: boca=mouth in Spanish). I think he was modeling his plan on what’s been done with the Eiffel Tower, although it reminded me of the George Washington Bridge’s lights.
We made some friends at the conference – Juan, Romy, and Marcos – who invited us to drink mate with them at one of their homes. Unfortunately, we had to head back to the city, so they dropped us off at the train station in Banfield. They warned us to keep the train windows up, because of “los negros,” who sometimes throw rocks at the train. They took pains to explain that, here, “los negros” is used to mean poor people, and has no racial connotations whatsoever. I’m still not completely convinced of this, although it is true that, around Buenos Aires, everybody looks pretty much the same.
Learning the conditional tense (what would you do if you could sell your sell to the devil?) has led us into personal territory. When you can’t say complex things, you’re left talking about essentials. Thus language class has become a strange bonding ritual in which we discuss our desires and our deepest fears (although no fears until we get to the subjunctive).
My class at UBA is mostly women, but at the Spanish Language Institute in New York (where classes cost US$16.11/hr compared do US$1.56/hr here) I was in a class with 3 other men and male teacher. The teacher was Colombian, one man was from New York, one from the Netherlands, and one from India; I put myself down as being from Michigan. When we studied the subjunctive, everybody’s fears seemed to relate to women. The guy from the Netherlands was afraid he had made the wrong decision when he left his ex-girlfriend to come to the U.S. The New Yorker was afraid things wouldn’t work out when his Latin American girlfriend moved to NYC. The guy from India worried he would never find the right woman (I was in his club), and the teacher had fears about his wife. I doubt these things would have come out had we been studying calculus.
On Speaking: I try to relax and speak smoothly, but then I make a lot of mistakes. I’m reminded of when I had just started studying violin and was working on my left hand position. My teacher would have me contort my hand into the proper position and then order me to relax. Needless to say I couldn’t relax unless I gave up the correct hand position. How I eventually learned to do it, I don’t know. I just hope Spanish eventually comes to feel natural, too. Right now, I’m grateful that I can’t see myself from the perspective of a Spanish-speaker. Today, for example, I ask a friend to “arrive me” when I meant “call me.”
On Comprehension: Understanding Spanish, too, seems to require a delicate balance of attentiveness and mental looseness. If I just relax too much, the sounds just wash over me and I get nothing. If I try to catch every word, I get hung up on a phrase I almost understand and fall hopelessly behind. But if I can find the right balance, I can understand most of what people say.
My big breakthrough in comprehension came last weekend, when I was at a conference where we discussed cleaning up the Riachuelo – a river separating the central section of Buenos Aires from some nearby suburb-like communities including Avellaneda and Lanús. You can smell the sulfur-oil-vomit odor of this river from perhaps a kilometer away. Anyway, I wasn’t understanding a thing until I told myself to pretend I was in Spanish class. When I tried this, it was like I suddenly had a babelfish in my ear. Why this worked, I have no idea. The same trick doesn’t work in Spanish class, where I remain the slow kid who somehow did miraculously well on his entrance exam and is now surrounded by people with years of Spanish classes.
Of course, even when I understood what was going on, I was still in trouble at the conference when I had to speak. The “conference,” in fact, turned out to be more of a workshop. We were divided up into 20 groups of 5-10 and told to develop a management plan for the Riachuelo. I tried to make my mark as a man of few words, but on the second day one woman was particularly curious about the New York perspective. How, she wondered, had we cleaned up the Hudson River? Uh-oh.
Kate and I had one companion in our struggles with the Spanish Language – a large, hairy German named Rolf. He spoke nary a word of Spanish, and traveled everywhere with an interpreter; you can see him in the middle of the picture above, which also features Kate. He, however, was a special guest clearly brought in for the occasion by the Fondación Ciudad, a group that somehow appears to be rolling in money. Rolf spoke on the opening panel, and proposed covering lots of things (the bridge at the mouth of the Riachuelo, old factories alongside the river) with bright lights and sports logos. His proposals provoked laughter, which may or may not have been what he was going for. Although it was unclear how his projects would be funded, lighting the bridge struck me as a good way of calling attention to the Riachuelo while maintaining the historic character of La Boca, an artist’s community at the river’s mouth (I just got it: boca=mouth in Spanish). I think he was modeling his plan on what’s been done with the Eiffel Tower, although it reminded me of the George Washington Bridge’s lights.
We made some friends at the conference – Juan, Romy, and Marcos – who invited us to drink mate with them at one of their homes. Unfortunately, we had to head back to the city, so they dropped us off at the train station in Banfield. They warned us to keep the train windows up, because of “los negros,” who sometimes throw rocks at the train. They took pains to explain that, here, “los negros” is used to mean poor people, and has no racial connotations whatsoever. I’m still not completely convinced of this, although it is true that, around Buenos Aires, everybody looks pretty much the same.
previously there was manifestación
afterwards you have urgent
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