Novel Times, Novel Measures

I know, I know, all has been quiet on the Guatemalan front. A little too quiet, perhaps. You may have been wondering if I had gotten lost in Guatemala, or if, perhaps, I had been robbed again, this time at gun point. Or maybe you are simply enjoying your summer as I am, content to loll lazily, not concerned with any recent goings-on, mine or otherwise. If the latter, then I applaud you and am somewhat relieved. You see, since landing in Antigua and recommencing my spanish studies, I have had little time for anything else. Six hours of class a day plus study time, homework, and meals leaves time for little else. True to form, I have thrown myself fully into my studies and consequently, in addition to being short on time, I also find myself short on mental wherewithal for anything but lolling lazily.

Antigua has been a good choice for my studies. The town itself is beautiful and full of activity, culture and life. I am living with a family again which means that I can restrict myself to the spanish-speaking world if I so desire or take brief respite in Gringoland all around. This is my third week of studies and, in that time, four different teachers and two separate families have allowed for quite a diverse experience of people and place. The practice of changing teachers each week is fairly common – some would say it is the best way to practice understanding the diverse accents and cadences of spanish speakers. For my morning and afternoon classes I have had both good and mediocre teachers. This week I am delighted with my teachers, the most talented and my favorite so far. I would be tempted to continue my studies with them if they were not drawing to a close.

But what of the families, you might ask? Why did I shuffle them around as well? As with teachers, placement in families through a language school is a random process resulting in a very mixed bag. My first placement might be more aptly described as a boarding house than a family. There was a family but the other 4 students and I did not eat with them. Only the mother would grace us with her presence during the mediocre meals. In her defense – and that of many other host families – it makes great economic sense to have multiple students. In such a case, however, the student suffers if they desire to have a more traditional and intensive experience living with a family. I was not all that happy with my first family. To complicate matters, the other students, a German couple and two American women, spoke German to each other, and had been doing so regularly since before I arrived. The mother of the house, being in part rightfully concerned for my experience and in part a frightful drama queen, assumed that I was not happy. She went so far as to assume that I did not like the other students and vice-versa. When I changed families after the first week she went even further to accuse the other students of driving me away. I’ve been told by the others that things have only gotten worse.

I’ll spare you the rest of the gossip. Suffice to say that changing families was one of the better decisions I’ve made on this trip. My current family is authentic and warm, and have welcomed me into their daily lives. The mother, Juana, is a former Spanish teacher who corrects my struggling spanish and the father, Marco, is a french fellow who now lives in Antigua with Juana and their two adorable daughters. Since they run a restaurant out of the front of their home, they serve up a mean plato del dia for lunch. For the unitiated, plato del dia (or comida corrida in Mexico) is a common lunch option which, for a fixed price, typically includes a full meal of drink, soup, entree and oftentimes a pastel for dessert. MMMM! As the youngest daughter, Katerina, observed last week, “¡Lorenzo es gordito!”. I certainly didn’t need her help to know that I haven’t lost weight on this trip. In all honesty, one of the things I miss most about home is regular exercise, whether it be yoga, jogging or ultimate frisbee. Ah summer in New Jersey… soon enough.

So, as I intimated, Spanish is THE thing for me right now. I have been working hard and all around fairly happy with my progress. For only studying formally with a teacher for 3 and a half weeks, I should say I am very happy. Right now I am working on my command of what seems to be a staggering array of tenses, 11 in total: present indicative (I talk), past preterito (I talked), past imperfect (I was talking), future simple (I will talk), future imperfect (I am going to talk), conditional (I would be talking) and the 5 progressive tenses. Impressive, no? Well, actually, no – these are just the basics. Turns out that most people talk in the subjunctive and perfect tenses which still await me in the future. Since I only have a few days left, I have decided for this week to cement what I have learned up to now instead of forging ahead blindly. In trying to do so I continually realize the long road towards proficiency in the aforementioned 11 tenses, not to mention tricky (and, in some cases in English, unused) prepositions, confusing direct and indirect objects and the ever-present agreement necessary between nouns and articles, adjectives and whatnot. ¡Aiy! Such realizations are very daunting and nearly send me crawling back into my comfortable English hole. I will persevere, however. As I am fond of saying, life is long. If I keep at it, little by little, poco a poco, one day I will be able to converse in Spanish with ease.

NOTES ON ESPAÑOL:

I spoke briefly above about some of the grammatical difficulties that I have been grappling with. In time, perhaps even by the end of this trip, I will be able to say that they are no longer difficult. However, there is another subtle and, perhaps, much more difficult aspect of learning a new language that I did not touch upon. For now I am calling this the Translation Barrier. Perhaps an example would help explain.

This afternoon, while writing a story in class, I wanted to say Cars were everywhere so I wrote in spanish Carros estaban todos. My teacher promptly informed me that this structure was incorrect. Instead, she told me, I should use Habia muchos carros, which translates to There were many cars. OK, so the idea is pretty much the same right? Sure, but, being my obstinate self, I objected. I wanted to say Cars were everywhere! Herein lies the problem.

Language is a tool for communication and an imperfect tool at that. Even if I speak the same language as another, how can I be sure that they interpret my words as intended? So many variables arise when considering shared meaning that it is literally impossible to know for certain that the recipient comprehends in full the information being relayed. Consequently we settle for the assumption that shared meaning exists and (hopefully) strive to broaden our palette of linguistic symbols with which to express ourselves. When learning another language it would seem that the problem is magnified enormously.

I am new at this game and I am the first to admit that my sentence Carros estaban todos was grammatically incorrect. I also have to assume that my intention could be expressed with the same meaning (well, with a very similar meaning) in a different form. But how do I know? Even if I were to compile an astounding array of vocabulary words, the order in which I use them, the ever-delicate order, dictates how they relate to each other. Add to that the confusion of grammatical idiosyncracies for a given language (I still have problems accepting that all nouns in Spanish need an article) and you have the Translation Barrier.

A while back I made a promise to myself: I will not read 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez until I can read it in his native tongue of Spanish. A noble goal that now seems quite daunting when I confront the subtleties of language that continue to elude.

Filed under: Language