|
The
Darndest Things |
Being
once again devoid of the inspiration and deep and insightful thoughts
usually expected by my readers, I will reach into my bag of random topics.
The letter of the month is …*drum roll*…W! W is for woo, the
exclamation, not the verb. And
the topic of the month is foreign languages!
Thrilling!
Why such a random topic, you ask?
Foreign languages are darned useful, that’s why!
People speak foreign languages all the time.
Never mind the talking to other people, that’s much too obvious,
and who really likes to talk to people that much, anyway?
Talking in English is hard enough.
No, I write not of using languages to communicate with other
people, but of the ways it opens doors (and windows and other such
portals) in your mind. *eerie and very dramatic music*
Admit it or not, foreign languages often help
students with grammar in English. I
doubt that many people have realized the true power of the subjunctive
until after they have studied a foreign language such as Spanish. It keeps appearing everywhere, about every two chapters or
so. “The subjunctive again?
Que barbaridad!” The
subjunctive is very versatile and virtually omnipotent, like cheese. A word of advice: If I were you, I would respect the
subjunctive, whether in English or Spanish, or another foreign language.
If you’re ever feeling really depressed and
stupid, start translating everything you’re saying or thinking into
Spanish. Everything sounds so
much nicer and much more complex in Spanish.
This is attested to by the fact that if you copy a three page essay
on Miguel Cervantes into Altavist and translate back to English, it ends
up sounding like one of those little paragraphs on super-wide-lined paper
that you had to write back in second grade.
(For more fun, translate from Spanish to English to Portuguese to
Japanese to German to English. And
of course it’s just a nice distraction from the mundane things in life
to walk around thinking “Duude! I just used a present participle!
Wooooo! Go me!” and subsequently crash into a pole.
Like I’ve said before it’s much better if you have big glasses
and blink a lot, like me. The
crashing and the looking dorky part is much more convincing this way.
There seems to be no end to the amusement
people get out of insulting each other brokenly in other languages. Since the insults are spontaneous, the grammar is often
wrong, and sometimes a person might end up insulting himself.
But everybody around the verbal fighters understands what’s going
on; “You suck, haha!” is universal.
In Spanish class, some things that would sound immature and absurd
and that make absolutely no sense in English sound perfectly fine in
Spanish ( at least to people who can’t tell the difference in
pronunciation between hombre and hambre).
Of course, some things that sound immature and inane in English
sound immature and inane in Spanish.
So it goes. And what
good’s a foreign langauage if you can’t say “Saca diez y quice
puntos, mi Sancho, tengo hombre!”?
This is usually when the teacher tries really hard not to grin or
laugh out loud, which results in accusing and inquiring looks from
students. The phrase “Kids
say the darndest things” should be changed to “Spanish 3 Honors kids
say the darndest things.” Of
course, it’s not our fault, really, we’re just silly like that.