Friday, July 24, 2009
The Natural Linguist
I'm trying to learn a language. Guess which one?
Nope, not Arabic. I've come to Qatar and started to learn Spanish.
Now I'm not a natural linguist. That's an understatement. I am a terrible linguist. I did 5 years of French at school and I think I could probably order a sandwich if I was about to starve to death, but only if you wanted cheese.
Spanish was clearly never going to be easy.
My first lesson was ok: Hola, Adios, Si, No. No problemos!
My second lesson went quickly downhill as I realised there were male and female words, like in French, but even worse, they're not the same! In French, car (voiture) is female, in Spanish, car (coche) is male. I think they've done it to spite me.
And if you think that's bad, in French dog (chien) is male. In Spanish you have to go and find out what sex the dog is before you can talk about it....which does seem a little impractical, and must hold conversations back somewhat.
So, anyway, I've perservered with the el's and la's and even with the ser's and estar's (why they need 2 different words for 'to be' i have no idea), but this week I had a lesson with a new teacher.
This guy can only just be out of short trousers, but after approxiately 2 minutes, he made me feel completely inadequate. Inadequate not only with my terrible language skills, but also with my schooling.
Apparently "Conditional Tense" should mean something to me, as should "Present Subjunctive", "Indirect Discourse" and "Subordinate phrase".
I know what a verb is, does that help?
...and it's not just me. The same teacher has 4 other students learning Spanish, from various parts of England, and none of us know any grammar.
No wonder I got an 'A' in my GCSE English Exam, we didn't need to know anything.
