Just a brief post, to articulate my ineptitude with the Spanish language. Not that I am good with English, as my split infinitives and awkward pose attest (yet I give a shout out to all of my amazingly wonderful English teachers- yes STers that includes Neilsen - and thesis committee members who have had to help me with my writing). And my French is pretty horrible, but I can at least learn it pretty well and communicate despite having a bad accent (that sounds British, I am told, but I digress...). However my experiences with Spanish have really dragged my self esteem to its lowest valley ever. Maybe THAT´s why the altitude adjustment has been slowing my breathing down, because of some sort of metaphysical difference between my emotional altitude and the physical altitude... okay, that made sense in my head, briefly.
Speaking of my head, I will provide merely one example of what is repeated mucho times each and every HOUR here. I wanted to tell my housemates I had a headache (methinks from the altitude adjustment, by the way) and said ¨Yo tengo un dolor de cerveza.¨ Now, every good fan of the fine drinks in life KNOWS cerveza is beer. As does every man, woman, and child in California. But anyway, I meant ¨cabeza¨ (head) which in my defense sounds similar. But really, I had JUST asked how to say this a few minutes prior from someone else and couldn´t remember it long enough to regurgitate. Adrian was kind about my bastardization of his language (numero 5,478) by telling me he often calls the ¨kitchen¨a ¨chicken.¨ And yes, learning a language takes time and there are slips. But seriously, people, I forget the words as soon as someone tells me. And often insert French words, especially for definite articles. el, le ... they are pallendromes and I´m dyslexic, dammit. Yes, parental Cromps, you supported me through EIGHTEEN YEARS of education, and this is all I can say.
Mi gusta una cerveza.
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5 comments:
Donde esta la zapataria? That's all you need to know how to say.
I just wanted to point out from my recollection of high school spanish that it should be "me gusta" :D
Hello from the land of below freezing!
So then... did you end up saying, roughly, that you have a beer ache?
See you aren't the only one who sucks on the spanish. (And I should know it, since my mom yelled at me in Spanish whenever I did something bad - ie, often.)
I shall point out that all I could do as of yesterday was SAY ¨mi gusta una cerveza¨ but TODAY I can also write ¨Me gusta una cerveza¨ because we covered pronombres, yo.
And Latin machismo.
I'd like to put in a vote to hear more about the lesson in Latin machismo....for the sake of vicarious living and all.
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