Spanish 101

For Mexico 2010 marks 200 years of independence from Spain and 100 years since the revolution against the Porfirio Diaz regime.
Please follow the link for more information on the fascinating history of Mexico and the events surrounding this celebration - www.english.bicentenario.gob.mx


Spanish 101

As most of you know I moved to Mexico with very little knowledge of the language and after living here for over two months my Spanish has improved only slightly.
There are two factors for this –
First, to be honest, I have been lazy to learn – I have the tools, the time and the opportunity but just haven’t applied myself.
Second I have been really shy to use what I do know.

What also enables my English is that it seems nearly everyone I meet has spent some portion of their lives in the State and most times they are more apt to use English rather than speak to me in Spanish.

I have met many folks who have worked in the States and have also met people who were moved to the States as children. They thought of themselves as always living in the U.S. until they were in trouble with the law and sent to Mexico.

There have even been situations where strangers, realizing my nationality will start to engage me in conversation.

Sometimes I am just surprised; people like the owner of the liquor store who I have only known to speak Spanish for two months started to talk to me in perfect English, telling me how he grew up in California.

It would seem that most of the Spanish I have learned involves buying alcohol. My friends feel that for me to go into a store on my own is a great way to learn. Now I do have a fairly good understanding of numbers and money plus after awhile you begin to know what things should cost so I am not totally unprepared.

On one of our Sunday afternoon trips into the country we stopped in a small town and I ran into the store to buy three beers thinking I did very well giving my order. “Tres cerveza por favor, Victoria nonretornable”. But instead of three bottles of beer he starts to hand me three six-packs. That’s when the hand signals and the laughing start. This is truly the best part of being here because nobody has ever shown frustration or anger over my lack of Spanish – they are always helpful and have a good laugh. I don’t know, they could be laughing at me but they are always good natured.

Another Sunday afternoon trip and another small town “convenience” store. This time I’m not feeling real comfortable going in on my own so one of my friends accompanies me. Luckily he did because after what seemed to be a lot of discussion with the elderly lady behind the counter three beers are produced. When it’s time to pay it's very obvious that the woman is extremely inebriated, confused and can not remember where she left her cash box. My reaction to all this was “can you imagine? Me, in there by myself with my Spanish and her drunk?”.

On our trips over to the canyon area we almost always stop for a beer at our favorite “convenience” store. It’s just a nice quiet place out in the country to sit and relax for a moment. Last time we stopped there was one customer standing outside the service window and my friends were doing all the talking. But as we were walking away the customer calls out to me “bye, see you tomorrow”. I guess it’s pretty obvious sometimes that I’m not from around here. Funny part of this story was that the store was completely sold out of beer, just like the gas station was completely sold out of gas one day.

For the folks that don’t speak English but want to communicate sign language can be very effective. The father of the friends I am staying with always likes to talk to me and will start out speaking to me as though I was fluent in Spanish. Eventually the conversation turns from the spoken word to silence and hand signals. My name, Clark, is hard for some folks to understand so the father now calls me "Junior".

The night I learned to ride a horse was very similar with the hands being pushed down and forward to indicate that I should just take it slow. This is great advice if you know how to slow a horse in the first place, but we’ll save that for another story.

Like I said I am shy to speak but some days I do try to use the basics. So here I am in the checkout line at Wal-Mart in Leon. I have made my way through the greeting with the check out girl and then she starts talking to me and all I can say is “no entiende”. Then we start laughing and the hand signals start with her making a side to side motion as if to say forget it.

Of course there are the mistakes in understanding. I have not gotten that far yet but do have a couple of stories from others.

From time to time we visit a truly remarkable woman out on her ranch in the country. She is 96 and the first time I met her we had gone to visit because she was dying, the priest had been called and her sons were coming back from California. She is just a tiny thing, but she had rallied and hers is one of the strongest handshakes I have ever known. Back in the 70’s, while in her 50’s she had walked across the border to work in the States as a nanny to earn money to save the family ranch. When she met her new employer they shook hands and as they shook hands the women said “Hi”. Our friend understood her new employer to say “Aiy” meaning she was hurt and thought – what the hell did I do to hurt this women.

And then there is “Jose” as in “no way Jose”. I was talking with a gentleman who has spent thirty some years working in the U.S. and has a good knowledge of English. His question to me though was why do they always say “Jose”, my name is not Jose………….

I am committed to living in Mexico and I have a desire and a need to learn Spanish. My goal is to study at least one hour a day and practice what I am learning. I have tried in the past to structure my days more but for some reason it’s always going to start tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted.