Oh, I am so ordinary. Always, always, I have wanted to speak Spanish and here I am in Mexico and it appears that I have already given up the study of the language. Just like everybody else.
I started out strong. Dave and I each had classes 5 days a week for 2 hours a day. We spent $1000 and learned a lot. I studied every day. I recognize the preterite now and the imperfect but it is quite a struggle to find the right word when I need it. And, truthfully, I rarely need my Spanish. When I speak Spanish, I am usually answered in English. This is a tourist town and most of the people I interact with speak English with a fluency I will never achieve.
Our daily life is principally with each other and with Ray and Dave's parents. We never speak Spanish because communication is enough of a challenge in English.
I know how bad my accent is and how fractured my ideas are expressed. I realize that this is not the time or the place for true immersion, though it is as close as I ever have been.
I have been reading a lot of W. Somerset Maugham. He is the perfect writer for living in a place with geckos on the walls and this warm, wet weather. A quote from the master...
"We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that,
with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to
the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with
ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in
the house."
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