Me llamo Sol

I'm bad with languages.

It's not "oh I'm okay with languages but they're not my specialty" or "I have some difficulties grasping other languages". I'm just objectively bad at learning new languages. Over fourteen years of studying Hebrew I learned about ten words. I had a panic attack when I took Spanish in high school and had to switch out immediately. I did pretty well in Chinese but forgot it all when I came to Chicago. Most people can read all the Wheel of Time books in the time it takes me to memorize "hello".

Part of the reason I jumped at this chance was to forcibly get better at Spanish. I don't use it at work or at home or when travelling with my friends. But enough things are in Spanish that I start picking up small bits of it, and trying to interact with people outside my little bubble has improved my abilities enormously. And the administration secretary has been more than happy to help me learn the grammar. For the most part I can't understand people but can be understood. I can read many things in Spanish now although I can't quite write it. But I'm improving!  If I go from ignorant to barely fluent then the entire summer would be worth it for that alone. And as time goes on I grow more confident about that.

Not to say I could be going faster. And I'm frustrated at how lazy I often am about this. I keep promising myself to buy Spanish books and watch telesoaps but never get around to it. I used to scrawl language aids- verb tenses, grammatical rules- on my whiteboard. It hasn't gone updated in about a week. Actually... be right back.

...

Okay, I just filled my whiteboard with common verbs. Had to ask the secretary about a few bits I didn't understand. Mostly it was about when to use different words for 'fix'. One of the really annoying things about Spanish is that none of the verbs are interchangeable. In English "to have" is universal. I have happiness, I have the keys, may I have the keys? I've used it as "to be", "to possess", and "to take". But in Spanish I can't use tener like that. I can only say "I have hunger", not "I have happiness". I need to use estar for "to be". Similarly I have to use tomar or prestar for take. Similar problems crop up in a lot of cases. "Know" in English is universal, but en castellano there are separate words for "understand," "think," and "be acquainted with." I originally (originayee?) thought that I could memorize just one and use it interchangeably, but nobody understands me when I do that. Ah well, ignorant American at play.

On the other hand, no multiple pronunciations! Every single a is pronounced as in "caught", every e as in "ten", etc etc etc. It means that when I do find the right word, more often than not I can pronounce it correctly. Big change from English. I'm sure that when I get better I will find new and exciting words to botch, though. My family will not have to die of shock. Learning Spanish, in short, is revealing to me both things that I hate about English and things that I love. I'm sure I would think the same if I had to study any other language. Occasionally I find that I miss 了. At least until I remember how terrible sinograms are.

So one last thing. People here have even more trouble with 'Hillel' than people back in Chicago. Back home some of you may know that if people have too much trouble with the name I tell them to call me 'Solomon.' I landed knowing that I probably wouldn't use Hillel for anybody but UChile staff and professors. I'd use Solomon for everybody else. I quickly found out the pronunciation of the vowels are pretty uncommon on Spanish and people were having trouble with that, too. By noon of day one I started introducing myself as 'Sol'. I later found out from Peter that I've been calling myself 'Sun'. Hey, it works.

I think tonight I'll try translating this post into Spanish. The bilinguals reading this should feel free to mock the resultant butchering.