Posts Tagged ‘language’

Although most of the media attention has been given over to el Clásico (also known as one of the most hyped matches of the year) between Barça and Real Madrid– which led to streets filled with chuffed Barça fans, the news which will be having a more personal effect is a little different.

They’ve abolished our apartment.

Well, to be precise, the RAE, the Royal Spanish Academy, guardians and staunch defenders of the mother tongue in the hispanic world, have decided that cuts are in this year. Up until yesterday ch and ll were considered single letters in a Spanish alphabet of 29 letters. We live in apartment 3LL (across the hall from 3L– it’s a big building, apparently it’s pretty rare outside of the big cities). So, instead of saying “elyay, tres elllyaaay” on the phone to telemarketers we’ll now be saying double L.

Earth shattering, isn’t it.

It also makes our scrabble set out of date, although the news was frustratingly unforthcoming about the effect on the scores.

LL Ñ CH RR

Aunque la mayoría de la prensa se fijaba en el clásico (uno de los partidos mas sobrevalorados del año) que acabó en las calles llenas de aficionados felices del Barça, la noticia que nos afectará en una forma mas personal es un poco diferente.

Han abolido el piso nuestro

Ser preciso, el RAE, los custodios y defensores de la lengua materna en el mundo de habla española, han decidido que este año los recortes estan de la moda. Antes de ayer la ch y la ll se consideraban letras dentro un alfabeto que consistía en las 29 letras. Vivimos en piso 3LL (enfrente de 3L– es un edificio grande, no es muy común así, fuera de las ciudades grandes). Así que en el lugar de decir “elle, elle” por el teléfono a las personas que hace ventas por teléfono, diremos doble L.

Qué noticia mas impactante.

También significa que ha quedado obsoleto nuestro juego de Scrabble, aun que no decían nada de eso en el telediario.

Okay, I’ve been here for a couple of years and a few months now, people expect me to be fluent in Spanish, but what does that mean?

Well I can understand pretty much everything on a day to day basis, I can follow the news (apart from when they start going on about individual politicians, I still get lost over who is in which party in what community and has done which crime). I can function alright on the telephone, I can argue with plumbers, I can go to the ironmongers and talk about hinges (bisagras) for the kitchen cupboards… so yes, in that sense I’m functionally fluent albeit with a vocabulary of an eleven year old who skipped a lot of school.

¿You want your mexican slang, güey? You got it...

But put me in a bar with loud music with a group of six or seven Spanish speakers (as I was on Saturday thanks to a very kind invitation from some of my students) and I struggle. I can understand the majority of what is said, except for the jokes, the cultural references and the slang. Which, when you think about it, would be the majority of a conversation I’d have in English with English mates. I should have a sign made up “En inglés estoy inteligente y ingenioso” to hang around my neck as I listen. I’m not complaining (I really did enjoy myself)… more just mentioning that it’s frustrating… I know that it will take many many years to reach a level of wittiness in Spanish, it’s just something I occasionally miss.

Then of course there’s the times when you put on a film and it’s Argentine (although I don’t have such a problem there) or Mexican. I watched Rudo y Cursi last night and after the first five minutes I had to go and download the Spanish subtitles. Mexican Spanish is full of slang (at least the Spanish in this film is. It’s probably analagous to watching Trainspotting). They kept saying “güey” as in “¿Que haces güey?” which I figured out was probably like mate (only a little less polite) and one of the characters was argentine so he kept saying “boludo”, add to that the “pendejo” and “chingar” (rude, just a bit) and the pronunciation “‘apa” for “papa” and the like meant that the subtitles were essential.

Damn fine film though.

So to practice, and improve… entonces para practicar y mejorar… otra vez pero en español.

Bueno, estoy aquí dos años y pocos meses, hay una expectación que lo domine yo el español, pero ¿Qué significa eso?

Pues, entiendo bastante bien casi todo día en día. Puedo entender las noticias (aparte de cuando hablen de políticos, me confunde quién es quién en cual partido, en cual comunidad y quién ha hecho cual crimen). Me desempeño bien en el teléfono, discuto  con los fontaneros, puedo ir a la ferretería y hablar sobre bisagras para los muebles de la cocina… entonces sí, en este sentido la domino la lengua aun que tenga el vocabulario de un niño que no iba mucho al colegio.

Pero si estoy en un pub con la música alta y un grupo de seis o siete españoles (como estuve el sábado pasado gracias a una invitación muy amable de unas alumnas) me quede difícil . Entiendo la mayoría de lo que hablan, menos los chistes, los referencias a la cultura y el argot que, si lo piensas, sería la mayoría de una conversación que lo tendría con mis amigos ingleses. Debería pedir para un cartel que dice “In English I’m clever and witty” para poner en mi cuello mientras escucho. No quejo (me pasó bien) mas digo que es un poco frustrante. Ya lo sé que llevará muchos años para conseguir el nivel para ser ingenioso en español, solo es algo que echo de menos de vez en cuando.

Hay tiempos cuando se pone una película argentina (aun que no tenga tan problemas con ellas) o mexicana, por supuesto. La vi Rudo y Cursi anoche y con cinco minutitos tuve que bajar los subtítulos españoles. El español del Mexico esta lleno del argot (al menos esta así en la película esta, probable es equivalente ver “Trainspotting” en inglés). Decían “güey” como “¿Que haces güey?” que pensaba que significaba “tío”, pero menos educado, y uno de ellos era argentino entonces decía “boludo”, con eso y el “pendejo” y “chingar” (palabras vulgares) y como pronunciaban “papa” como “apa” y tal resultó que  necesitaba los subtítulos.

Pero muy buena la película.

Pretty near the hospital

“How’s are you?” I asked, sitting down and getting my books out of my bag as the doctors put their white coats on and stuffed their pockets with scraps of paper, reference books and stethoscopes.

“It’s not a good day.” They said, “How do you say despedida in English?”

“Depends what you mean, can you explain a little more?”

“Yesterday some doctors were despedida’d and sent home.”

“Fired or made redundant?”

So it turns out that yesterday, with no warning fifty-some doctors were made redundant. This was a bit of a shock. Many had more than ten years service in the hospital. So now they face having to move to another part of Spain to find work, because all over Asturias the lack of tax revenue due to the economic downturn, la crisis means that public sector workers are facing a difficult future.

One of the problems is that to get a job in the public sector you have to do exams called oposiciones or opos. That’s for pretty much any public sector job. You want to be a rheumatologist, there’s an exam; a teacher, exam;  a council worker, exam; police, prison guard, you name it, there’s an exam.

Except when there isn’t.

In the hospital, in that department, there haven’t been any opos for fifteen years because there are no available places. If you get the top marks in an opo, you get the job you want and it’s for life. Which is why so many Spanish folk are preparing for them (I know half a dozen people who are in the process of doing opo preparation, there’s a whole industry of academies and tutors out there). If there are no opos you may still have a job but it’s an interina, a temporary job and you can be tossed out like these doctors were (with no more than one month’s pay).

Oposiciones were instituted, I’ve been told, in response to the old way of doing things, which was to know the right people, and to have the right politics (and it was right being the Franco era) in order to get a job. The exams were supposed to bring about a certain egalitarianism in candidate selection. Which it did. But then it went a bit far according to some Spanish friends, and the whole job-for-life at the end of it seems to encourage a certain lethargy  in those who have achieved that holy grail.

So to be a doctor, first you need to get the degree, then do an exam called the MIR in order to get onto a speciality (if you do well you can pick your speciality, if you don’t then you’re headed for wherever they tell you, you didn’t want to be  a GP? Tough.). then you have to complete the residency requirements and then to progress from temporary contracts to permanent, the oposición. Up until that point you have no more job security than anyone else, and, in these times of crisis, it seems, less.

It was a learning experience for everyone. Pompeyo had raised the issue at the AGM (and a few times before, sounding people out). What about those members of the group who had never in their lives put a pair of skis on? Why not use the knowledge of the group to give them a taster of skiing so they could decide whether or not they liked it.

They don't know what they've let themselves in for

It seemed like a reasonable idea, a few people agreed. So that’s what we did.

The ‘knowledgeable’ folk were: Pompeyo, Carmen, Me and Liz.

So we were teaching (coaching, pulling up from the floor, encouraging, trying not to wince) some absolute novices. Let’s be clear, we were not trying to teach them to ski, only teach them enough to stop (turn if at all possible) and to use the lift, and of course, let them have a go at putting on boots, getting up after a fall, that kind of thing. It didn’t  hurt that the plan included a discount on gear hire (€10) and the option of a big lunch (€12).

We went to Fuentes de Invierno (I took my camera but the visibility was so bad that it never left my pocket). Spring snow (i.e. wet). We had a quick recap of necessary vocab (ski tips: espatulas, the back of the ski: talon, edges: los cantos, bindings: sujetadores, brake!: frena, snowplough: cuña) in the car and off we went.

Chaos, absolute chaos... like herding cats

We marched up the bottom of a long flat green piste and set to work.

There’s nothing like watching absolute novices to show you how much you have learned (and to demonstrate some appropriate cursing, meca is the Asturian equivalent of “bugger”, because it is basically the short form of me cago en el mar (poo in the sea!) although you can soften it even more by using “me caches el el mar“). As expected there was much falling, flailing, yelping and laughing. What seemed to us painfully slow was for them frighteningly speedy, but they all seemed to enjoy it. I’ll be interested to hear from Noel what he thinks about teaching real beginners. Fuentes de Invierno has a ski school, but there seemed to be a huge number autodidacts today (that would be, all over the place).

After a few goes down this little slope, Sabi, one of my charges told me to say los giros not las giras (ie masculine not femenine) for the turns, as the femenine means a tour. This was a long way from being my only mistake in Spainsh today (I paid special attention to the ski instructors I passed later in the day for good phrases: no te tiras! (don’t lean back) was one of the most used).

After lunch Liz and I went up to tootle around (in the zero visibility) and the others (those still standing/willing) paid for a single go on a lift. There were only a couple of injuries, despite the ma

ny falls, nothing too serious (fingers crossed). I think it was a success, half of them will be back, I’m sure.

Why do banks have all the lights Originally uploaded by itsjustanalias.

So: you’re in a new place and you speak enough of the language to get around but not enough to actually, you know, engage in any sort of banter that would be beyond the average 5 year old. Back home you have this enormous store of knowledge, from personal experience, from TV, from friends, from everywhere. You know certain things without even knowing you know. Even if you last got a bus in 1978 you know that you pay the driver, you can say how much the fare is or where you’re going (except Londoners, you and your fancy conductors are special). Before you try something as simple as using the bus I wonder, do you ever think, what if it’s different? What if they use tokens? What if there’s a machine and you have to use the correct change? What if the driver doesn’t understand? WHAT IF PEOPLE STARE?

Or for instance, what if you go to the swimming baths and you have to have flip-flops or something similar? What if you have to wear a swimming cap? What if you inadvertantly start swimming in the wrong direction? What if you have to wear a pair of speedos four sizes too small (I’m thinking of you here France)? WHAT IF PEOPLE STARE?

And then, after the agonising five minutes of what if, you go ahead and use the bus, and go for a swim and find out that anywhere in the city is 85 centavos, and that you only need a cap, that the nice lifeguard will lend you, and you have an olympic sized lane to yourself, and that nobody bats an eye. Then you might feel a little foolish and people can tell that and they’ll know you’re different and THEY’LL STARE…

Or not. Because, well, it’s just not a big deal.