Spanish is the Loving-Tongue

Spanish is a beautiful language. At least I think it is, seeing as I still don´t have a thorough grasp of it. I actually think being ambigiously ethnic like I am makes it a little more difficult for me. I´ve had lots of Colombians assume I was latino of some kind and therefore should have a grasp on the language. So they just start launching into their 1000 word a minute Spanish. A couple people even even stopped me on the streat to ask for directions. I tried to help one guy and he just started laughing and walked away. My white gringo friends have no such problem. No one is going to mistake them for anything but rich tourists from the US.

But all the damn conjugations! Someone told me (and for all I know it could be true) that there are 509 seperate regular verb conjugations in Spanish to memorize, and then you go on to the irregular verbs. English as a contrast has 9. Sure English has lots of exceptions to memorize, but you can get your point across without knowing all those.

All those verb conjugations in different tenses mean that the usage of nouns is almost optional in this language. So when you´re talking with a local, unless you know and can recall all the conjugations rapidly your chances of figuring out what´s going on are slim. Sure I can identify the verb, but who the hell knows who is the noun of the sentance and what the objects are.

Then there´s the whole thing with the two seperate past tenses. I´m continually mixing up when I´m supposed to use the imperfect and the preterite. And whenever I ask someone why they used one instead of the other the answer is always...¨becuase it sounds funny otherwise¨ Gee thanks, that helps.

I guess the great benefit is that the Spanish language lets you convey complex ideas with only a few words. It really is far more poetic than English (at least I think it is). And I especially love how you can form new words by sticking direct and indirect objects onto verbs. Vamanos!

And the diminutive is pretty damn cool. Just by adding an -ita or -ito to a word changes the entire meaning. Right now becomes soon, a friend becomes an acquintance and a meal becomes a snack. Plus who doesn´t love being refered to as ¨mi papito¨?

My goal was to be fluent by time the my voyage was over. But now I don´t know if that´s going to happen. Learning a language is hard and I haven´t actually been studying at all like I thought I would. But I´ve been talking to everyone who will take the time to listen (and boy does it take time!). And I don´t even want to think about trying to learn Portugese in the month that I´ll be in Brazil. Maybe just enough to get by.