One of the easier things about learning Spanish is the pronunciation in general. There are some things that are very different from English, like the silent h, the harsh "j" sound, and of course rolling the rrrrrrs. A simple word like "rojo," (red), is difficult to pronounce correctly because you have to roll the first r and make the j sound in your throat. But 99% of the time Spanish words are pronounced like they're spelled phonetically. After you learn the rules, there are no surprises. Every syllable is pronounced, and the accents are handy to tell you if there are any changes in which syllable gets stressed. English, on the other hand, is a pain in the culo.
Because each syllable is pronounced in Spanish words, it's difficult for Spanish people to turn off the instinct to pronounce every syllable when speaking English. For this reason, one of the main difficulties that they have when learning English is with words ending in "ed". "Asked" becomes "as-ked", "watched" is "watch-ed," etc. The ones that have t or d before the "ed" are easy: invited, decided, and so on. But the rest are a constant source of annoyance. Another problem is the tendency to say "the people is," because "people" in Spanish is most commonly "la gente," which is singular. And still another is to says "fathers" instead of parents, "brothers" instead of "siblings," and "childrens" instead of "children". All of these come from directly translating from one language to another. The interesting thing is that each person, or each group of people, who learns English as a second language makes mistakes that are unique depending on what their native language is. I've never sat in on a Chinese ESL class, for example, but I imagine that their version of English is different than that of my students, especially at a basic level. I have even seem some examples of this when people are thinking in Catalan before speaking English. One common error is to say "dinner" when they really mean "lunch", because "lunch" in Catalan is "dina"....
...or else.
And this brings me to my second point, which I think I've mentioned before. When I took the TEFL course in Sevilla, once of the things they emphasized is that with this course, you're certified to teach anywhere in the world. And even better, their spectacular lesson plans would allow you to teach even in a country where you didn't speak the language. This might be true if you have the luxury of restricting yourself to teaching only advanced students who never ask you "how do you say ____ in English?". But in the real world, if you want to teach basic classes, if you want to avoid wasting time looking things up in the dictionary, if you want to understand (and help your students understand) why they make the mistakes they do, and if you want to help them form associations with words in their native language, at least some grasp of their native language is a huge benefit. And if nothing else, you can at least commiserate and stop them from beating themselves up so much when you tell them funny stories of your own mistakes. (I recently went into a Zara and asked where was the department for things for the home, pointing at a sign. After being told that there wasn't one at that store, I looked again and saw that it said Homme, as in "man" in Catalan. Oops). But even my extremely basic knowledge of Catalan comes in handy when I can explain that "fork" sounds like "forquilla" and "cousin" is similar to "cosí". I guess my point is that I've learned a lot of things during my time teaching, and one of them is to not listening to the marketing techniques of a company that's trying to get you to pay for their course.
But as difficult as English spelling and pronunciation can be, it's also a source of humor for those who don't take themselves so seriously. I wish I had a videocamera in my class the day I taught the group the words "tweezers," and they all repeated it for a minute straight. It sounded like a group of little birds at feeding time. Have you ever thought about how similar "message" and "massage" sound? And how embarrassing it would be if you're a receptionist and say "Your wife wanted me to give you this massage" by accident? The other day, I wrote the phrase "traffic jam" up on the board, and one woman, Rosa, said "oh, traffic ham" and everyone starting laughing and making jokes about traffic hams. I told them to just be sure to remember the real pronunciation, or they're going to insist to someone that their English teacher told them it was "jamón de trafico". And it makes me laugh everytime to hear people think out loud, or explain to another student, the spelling of an English word by pronouncing it like a Spanish word. I've heard "mistake" pronounced "mees-ta-kay" so many times, I've had to stop myself from using it as a real word when I'm speaking Spanish. Lettuce is "lay-too-say," naturally. And on Thursday, when I was teaching little Javier the frequency adverbs (always, often, never...) he was copying down the word "sometimes" and said slowly under his breath "so-meh-tee-mays". We both couldn't stop laughing.
If you're still reading, thank you. And if I have a point somewhere in all this, I guess it's that you have to go easy on yourself when you're learning a language, and go even easier on other people. It's difficult for ways that you never expect until you're in the middle of it. Even the simple act of ordering an ice cream cone in Spanish can turn into an R-rated mistake if you're not careful (as Eric, who works at an ice cream place) loves to tell me about.
I'm off to prepare for KC's arrival tonight! She's flying in from Ireland and staying until Friday. We're planning a Thanksgiving feast, so if anyone has any suggestions about recipes or ways to not screw up the turkey, they'd be much appreciated. If not, I can always trust Martha Stewart's recipe on how to fry a turkey on a jail cell radiator.
Besos y abrazos!
