This week, our Peace Corps work got off to an official start as we opened up an eight-week English-refresher course for the local childrens. Our first activity was letting the kids choose their English names. Little Bart and Lisa here couldn´t have been happier!:
Unattractive as it may be to admit, it´s been a welcome turn of the table watching their li´l brows furl as they struggle with pronunciation and spelling. Because here´s a dirty little secret: we don´t actually speak Spanish.
Or, at least, the tortured dialect that trips clumsily from our tongues is unlikely to impress our host country nationals. For the record, though, the people in our community have been abundantly patient and helpful as we toddle our way along toward ¨conversant¨ status.
For example, a few weeks ago I was trying to tell our neighbor Paolo that I had just met his son, but what came out of my mouth was that I had just cooked his son. Instead of doing what I would have done – yelling ¨You son of a bitch! That was my son! I loved him! And you cooked him!¨ – he just gave me a confused look and let me spend a few seconds correcting myself.
But we get a little better every day. We practice talking with the neighbors and the kids. We read the newspapers. We do exercises in workbooks. My mom even sent us a children´s book in Spanish, which has turned out to be a handy tool. It´s about an Aleutian mother and her child:
It´s really helped fill out our Alaskan animal vocabulary, which, as I´m sure you can imagine, has been a godsend. There´s nothing Panamanians like talking about more than narwhals.
Books are helpful for building vocabulary, but the best way to learn a new word is to have an encounter with it that leaves a strong impression. For example, one day we were talking to our host-mom Dominga and she told us her sons were going hunting. ¨What are they hunting for?¨we asked.
¨Venado!¨ she said.
¨What´s ´venado´?¨ we asked?
¨Venado! Venado! It´s like a cow but smaller. Venado!¨
Not having a dictionary, we let the issue drop.
The next day, her sons came by and went around the back of the house carrying a sack. Dominga, who had been talking to us as we studied on the porch, went over to see what they had. She emerged a few minutes later holding the severed head of a deer, its wide black eyes glassy with lifelessness.
¨Venado!¨ she said.
We were too shocked to go get the camera, which is one of our great regrets. On the plus side, though, we won´t forget the word for dear anytime soon.
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