More Language Gaffes

Today my husband informed me that many folks at church are laughing at him to his face--who knows how many might be laughing behind his back--and he's laying all the blame at my feet. (Personally, I credit Andy for this since the readership of his blog GREATLY surpasses that of my own.) But I guess I need to appologize for having so much fun at his expense, it's not his fault he's not very good at foreign language. Tonight when he was teaching the high schoolers, he passed up an opportunity to get me good. He showed me grace I didn't deserve. All I can say honey is, "Grawshus".

Seriously, though he butchered the simple stuff, I made far more linguistic gaffes in Ecuador than he did. As I high schooler, my Spanish was quite good. I had two years in junior high, followed by two more in high school. But what really made it click was spending five weeks in Ensenada, Mexico, working at an orphanage. By the time I left Ensenada, I was very close to fluent. However, the saying "You don't use it, you lose it" is especially true of a second language. It is NOT like riding a bike--you DO forget! I remembered quite a bit of my Spanish in Ecuador, but just enough to be a little dangerous (to my ego that is!).

I have a few tips of things NOT to say:
1. When you want to know what kind of fruit is in the juice, do not ask, "Que fruta es en el juego?" You have just asked what fruit is in the game. Juice is "jugo".
2. When your host serves fish, do not exclaim, "Ah, pecado!" You have just called their dinner "sin". Fish, once it becomes food, is "pescado". While it is still alive it is "pez", but it is never "pecado".
3. When you want to introduce your husband, do not say, "El es mi esposa" -- you just said "He is my wife." Do not then correct yourself and say, "El es su esposo" -- you just said, "He is your husband."

I remember that at one time I knew something about "tenses" in Spanish. In Ecuador, I did not live in the past! All my sentences were in the present, except for a few verbs I looked up. Talking with me was probably similar to a "See spot run! Run spot run!" sort of conversation, with the occasional vocabulary blunder and a plethora of wrong gendered endings.

I had several people laughing at me because I carried my LARGE paperback Spanish dictionary everywhere! One time I was trying to carry on a conversation while looking up a word I needed. Kathy Sutherland, a HCJB missionary, started laughing at me. That distracted me to the point I couldn't remember what I was looking up--when I stated as much, it made me remember that I was looking up the word, "remember". I learned the phrase, "No recuerdo", ("I don't remember") very well. It was oft used as I struggled to remember the word my host had just told me minutes earlier. My advice - learn another language early while you still have memory to spare.

On a positive note, the Bible says that laughter is good medicine, and my Spanish gave many something to laugh about! They all ought to be telling me, "Grawshus".