There are times when I am appalled that I moved here without remembering any Spanish. But to give myself credit, my level now is a vast improvement from when I first arrived. When I was flying down here, there was a bit of an issue in the Houston airport. The ladies at the counter at my gate told me in Spanish (because apparently I look Latin) that they had put my on another flight because my connecting flight was so late getting in. First of all, I am not Latin, and second of all, I told them I was getting on THAT plane. I said all this in English but they were not convinced that I wasn’t Latin.
When I got on the flight to Mexico, I fell asleep and was woke up when the flight attendant handed me the immigration and customs form. They gave me the Spanish form, because once again I apparently look Latin. In what little Spanish I know, I said “No hablo espanol” (at least I remembered that). And they proceeded to ask, “Are you not Latin? You look Latin.” No, I think If I was Latin I would know Spanish.
So upon arrival in Arequipa, I knew how to say these things:
- Hello = Hola
- How are you? = Como estas?
- I don’t speak Spanish = No hablo espanol.
- All of the numbers
- I want = quiero
So with that limited list, I am very understanding when Peruvians mess up their English. I don’t laugh at them. But there are times when I know they are laughing at me. It’s like my friends and I were saying, we sound like cavemen when we speak. For example, in a restaurant, you would hear this exchange:
"Hello. The menu please. I would like pizza. I would like Coca Cola. Cold please. Thank you. The bill please. Do you have change (hold up 100 soles). Goodbye."
When I try and form complete compound sentences and make things a little more exciting, I freeze and look like I want to cry. I can type and read Spanish just fine. I do it all the time with my Peruvian friend online. So why am I unable to form coherent sentences? And why must I resort to pointing to things like a cavewoman using her stick while grunting and mumbling to express what she wants?
I studied Spanish in high school. I studied Italian at university. So you think my ability to pick up a language would be smoother than it has been. But, Italian and Spanish are too similar for their own good. And, from what my Peruvian friends have told me, Spanishgrammar is more difficult than English. I feel sorry for teachers, then, because my English grammar book is so huge that it blocked everything in my bag from the x-ray at the airport, thus resulting in my entire carry on being unpacked at security. When I found out that the grammar book caused the problem, I thought, at least Spanish isn’t this difficult. But was I wrong…
In teacher training, I learned the term “False Friends” (yes I am giving you a grammar lesson right now). That term sounds like two faced friends who are incapable of having a proper friendship. Such is the case with me and Spanish….Anyways, a false friend is a word which appears to be identical, or almost identical, to a word in another language, but actually has a completely different meaning.
And as my friend Claire gave a nice lesson on false friends on her blog, I am going to steal it:
Seeing as I am always shaming my students for the mistakes they make in English, in the name of fairness, I am going to get my language geek on and share some of the ridiculous mistakes Ihave made in Spanish, all of which have stemmed from false friends.
Anos/Años
"How many years do you have?"
"I have 24 anuses."
That is the literal translation of a conversation I had when I was first trying out Spanish. It wasn't quite the
information I was wanting to share (and, for the record, I don't actually have 24 anuses.) The word for year is 'años'. Take the little squiggle from above the 'n' and the word means anuses. Since making this mistake I have spent a considerable amount of time practicing the difference between the two sounds so as not to make this mistake again.
Gato/Gateaux
"Hello! What would you like?" a lovely, smiley old lady greets me as I walk into a bakery.
"Hello. I would like a piece of cat please."
"Cat?"
"Yes, cat. Is chocolate cat possible?"
"Erm, I have chocolate cake. Here, like this."
"Yes, yes! One piece of chocolate cat please."
Needless to say I was not actually trying to order Garfield dipped in chocolate. My intention was to get chocolate cake, for which I assumed the word 'gateaux' would suffice. I presumed it was a universal word seeing as it is English speakers use it and it's French. How wrong I was. The word for cake in Spanish is 'pastel'.
Exit/éxito
"Excuse me," I said to a security guard when I arrived at the Estació de França in Barcelona. "Where is the success?"
"Pardon?"
"The success? Of the station? Where is it?"
In reality the success of the station was quite apparrent - it was a beautiful building with lots of trains running on time. What was not so clear to see was the exit, which is what I was looking for. Often when I don't know a word in Spanish I do the usual trick of putting an 'o' onto the end of the English word, and hope that it's somewhere in the region of the Spanish word I am aiming for. However, in this situation that did not work, as 'exito' translates to success.
So despite the 1000s of words in common, Spanish is not as straightforward as it seems. Just as I start to think I am getting the basics sorted, it throws another surprise at me. I will leave you with one final example. Recently I was in a park, when I saw this sight:
It was a llama! I was quite excited by this, seeing as the most exotic animals we have in parks in England are ducks, so I went over to say hello to him. As I approached the llama a voice shouted out, "No te molestes en la llama!!"
This was confusing. I didn't think I looked like a llama molester, or indeed any type of molester. It's not as though I was approaching the llama with a copy of the Karma Sutra in my hand. I have however since found out that 'molestar' is merely to bother something. So please don't 'molestar' me when I am studying Spanish. I definitely have a lot to learn.
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