I was at the store today and struck up a conversation with the woman bagging my groceries. I told her that I envied the fact that she is bilingual.
\nDH and I both had a year of Spanish in high school in addition to two of Latin. I can remember the opening conversation in the SRA module for Spanish I, and I quoted it to my bagger, who looked confused. I explained that it was the first thing they had us memorize….a conversation between two friends. “Hola, Isobelle…..”
\nShe told me that her son, who is bilingual, had taken Spanish in school and was getting poor grades. It seems that his teacher had a Castillian accent, and her son was unwilling to adapt to it, from the dialect he had learned at home. When he finally wised up to the waste of time, it was too late, and he’d lost a year of study.
\nDH hopes to sail again in water deeper and bluer than that of Lake Michigan. He picked up a book that gives him phrases to use should he need help repairing a diesel engine in a port where only Spanish is spoken. It seems to me that he needs to know how to say….”It’s broken. It won’t go. How much to fix it?” and that should get him by, but you know that he’ll memorize the names for motor parts, figuring that it will be cheaper if he does his own labor.
\nHow do you say “carburator” in Spanish???<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was at the store today and struck up a conversation with the woman bagging my groceries. I told her that I envied the fact that she is bilingual. DH and I both had a year of Spanish in high … Continue reading