A Spaniard By Any Other Name

One of my favorite parts of Spanish culture is the unique names. Perhaps not unique in their content so much as the combination of different common components at tortuous length. I offer as a prime example the name of the plaza that I look out over from my apartment window: Plaza de Santa Maria Soledad Torres Acosta. Given, the title of "plaza" and the namesakes saintliness inflate the length a little, but I have had students with names almost as long, such as Jose Miguel Ignacio de la Torre Reyes (altered slightly to protect the innocent). Imagine having to sign that on all your important documents. A couple of my business students have even truncated their names to make it easier for English speaking foreigners to remember.

As for myself, I have taken to christening my students with nicknames to make it easier to remember them and easier to discuss them with other teachers. I have to add the disclaimer that I don't do this to be disrespectful... I love my students. I usually pick their favorite word in English as the basis for the moniker and then that becomes their alias. My first example is a student that was much more intelligent than he initially portrayed himself to be. At first I thought that he was a very low level beginner because he had trouble understanding even the most basic questions.

Me: What is this? [speaking very slowly, pointing to a television]
Jorge: Huh?
Me: What... is... this? [I can't speak any slower or more clearly]
Jorge: Huh?
Me: What is this? [I point to a Pokemon poster on his wall featuring some sort of reptilian creature]
Jorge: That's Charizard, he is my favorite Pokemon because he is a dragon.
end scene


So little Jorge ended up with the nickname Jorge "huh." If I wasn't talking about something he liked, he absolutely did not give a shit about what I was saying and demonstrated this by responding to anything, either question or statement, with his nickname.

I recently ended classes with a student who was quite similar. He was a twelve year old named Gustavo and his last teacher was a friend of mine from the certification course I took when I first arrived here. After my first class with this student, I was convinced that my colleague had simply sat him in front of cartoons for eight months and made no attempt whatsoever to actually teach him. To keep things regular with my students, I always ask similar questions when I first arrive in class as a warm-up. What did you do this weekend? What did you do at school? Unerringly he would answer "Play fútbol." At first I just thought that he was just a soccer aficionado, but when I came back from Christmas and changed my routine slightly I realized that he was just feeding me bullshit.

Me: Hello, Gustavo! What did you get for Christmas?
Gustavo: Uhh..... Play fútbol.
Me under my breath: son of a bitch.
end scene


Guess what Gustavo got as a nickname. The reason I ended class with him was that he was accepted into a bilingual school.

One of my best students, at least the one that has improved the most, is a man named Pedro whom I teach on his lunch break. I tell this tale because it illustrates how casually Spaniards drop obscenity into their conversation. A lot of the time it is as if they don't really understand the gravity of cursing in English. Joder (ho-DAIR) is a pretty common utterance in a conversation with a Spaniard and it is the equivalent to our "fuck." Only, it isn't quite as heavy as it is in English. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to hear a priest drop the J-bomb with the way it gets bandied about over here.

He says it about almost everything. Even the most inconsequential happenings. If our meeting room gets changed: "FUCK!" If he misses one answer on an exercise: "FUCK!" I almost want to tell him that it's a pretty heavy hitter in the world of taboo words, but it's just too funny for now. Maybe on our last day of class I'll clue him in. The other day we were discussing the media and he emitted one of my favorite quotes of all time: "TV is... TV is a FUCK!" That it is, Pedro... that it is.

Again, guess what I call him.

In the end, I think it's a good thing that Spanish people have such unique and long names. That way there is something to call out when you are looking for a blind date in a crowd like this:

Find the tall, thin, attractive one with black hair and brown eyes.

What NOT to Say

It seems to me that a common theme in travel writing and blogging is the confusion and comedy that arise when learning a new language. This week I would like to demonstrate to you how one or two misplaced or mispronounced letters can result in sidesplitting laughter on the behalf of the native speaker.

Exhibit A:

For the Spanish, English vowels are one of the hardest parts of pronunciation. We were always taught that the vowels are a, e, i, o, and u, when in reality you should double that number because of long and short vowels... and don't forget the diphthongs. In Spanish, each letter makes one sound and only one sound, so everything is written phonetically which is why the difference between bow (as in the weapon of choice for archers) and bow (a show of respect popular in eastern countries) is often lost in a heteronymous nightmare. As a teacher I hear these little mistakes on a day to day basis. Being able to suppress my laughter can be a real task when a student talks about all the "fine bitches" in the south of Spain that they lay on in the Summer or the the areas of English they would like to "fuckus" on practicing. Being immature is so much funnier when you are supposed to be acting professional. Which reminds me, if anyone reading this works for the travel company 1-800-Beaches, please do us all a favor and hire a spokesperson with a Spanish accent.

Exhibit B: 

Next I would like to present my personal experience with public mortification. In Spanish, the word for chicken is pollo (POY-oh). Easy enough to pronounce, right? Well if you switch that last "o" for an "a" it means something entirely different. I will explain via a story.

I'm making my weekly shopping rounds, picking up wares from the different markets: vegetables at the green grocers, beer at the liquor store, tofu at the Chinese market. Everything is fine until it came time to visit the butcher. Because my Spanish is still pretty poor, I have to write my script ahead of time and rehearse it in my head like a little movie as I make my way to whatever I am supposed to do. Before I go to the grocer I have to practice the interaction mentally: "I'll have a half kilo of avocados, a quarter kilo of carrots and five apples." These little scripts usually include two or three appropriate responses from the other party and then my responses to their responses. It's a very short film. Perhaps four lines worth of dialogue. If someone should deviate from this script, I'm screwed. The entire interaction gets shot to hell. They could say something as simple as "Okay, half kilo of apples, right? And how are you today?" and I get that deer in the headlights look as I have to entirely rewrite the whole movie. I'ts not like I don't know the words. I do. Only, when I have expectations about the conversation that are proven wrong I forget every shred of Spanish. So, on my way from the Chinese market to the butcher I am practicing saying "a half kilo of chicken and a quarter kilo of chorizo, please." I repeat this over and over. Of course, when I finally get there and am asked what I want I declare with much gusto, in my best Spanish: "Un medio kilo de polla" and then judiciously, "y un quarto kilo de chorizo, por favor."

Translation: "A half kilo of penis and a quarter kilo of sausage, please."

You can imagine how much the burly, old Spanish butchers in their blood spattered aprons appreciated my request, and the courteous "please" at the end.

Exhibit C:

I was not personally present for this one, but I still have to tell the story so I am not the only idiot in this post. When we first arrived in Spain, Monica decided to take a Spanish class to brush up on her skills. As an assignment they were reading Little Red Riding Hood aloud to work on pronunciation. At one point in the story, the narrator explains that Little Red Riding Hood's only friends were the birds in the woods, and the word for bird in Spanish is pajaro. The poor woman reading this particular passage made the subtle mistake of switching the second "a" for an "e." It is truly amazing how one letter can change a fairy tale. When read as pajero, the story says that Little Red's only friends were a bunch of jerk-offs in the woods.

Conclusion:

I think the only thing I can say is that if you are going to learn a language, the first lesson should be on what not to say. Lesson 1: Dirty Words.