Learning a new language: My high-school Spanish teacher would say ‘I told you so’

Unless you’ve been living in your own Private Idaho, you must have noticed how much Latin culture has permeated our lives. From newscasters, weather persons, and journalists to music — think halftime at the Super Bowl — the Latin influence is just about everywhere. Those rolled Rs are all over the place.

I listen to a lot of radio, for both news and entertainment. There is a correspondent on NPR who does a lot of feature reports. She signs off at the end by saying, “This is Mandalit del Barrrrrco,” just rolling that R like dripping honey off a spoon; you can tell she’s enjoying it so much. Imagine getting that kind of satisfaction just from saying your own name.

In high school, we had to take a language class. I so wanted to take Italian, because most of my relatives and many of my classmates spoke Italian fluently. Had I been able to take Italian, I would have been able to use it with a lot of people in real life. That’s the best way to learn a language, by interacting with native speakers.

Alas, my school didn’t offer Italian, so I took Spanish. I really had no interest in Spanish so I didn’t work too hard at it. You always learn the best when you’re really into something, and I just wasn’t. My Spanish teacher, however, was totally into it.

He would find Spanish words that were, according to him, especially fun to pronounce because they forced you to use your tongue, lips, and mouth so adroitly. I still remember two of those words:

— Teotihuacan, a pre-Aztec, colossal Mesoamerican city; and

— Quetzalcoatl, a wise God.

When he pronounced these words, it was like an Olympic event. I’m not kidding. I was just glad I was sitting in the back so I didn’t get “sprayed.”

The only other thing I remember from that class is two sentences. One is perhaps the most useless sentence of all time and, surprisingly, the other is the most useful sentence of all time.

The useless one is: “De que color es tu corbata?” This means, “What color is your tie?”

Why would anyone except a blind person ever utter that sentence, and if you are indeed blind, you have bigger things to worry about that what color someone’s tie is, I would think.

The other sentence, the really useful one, is: “Dov'è il bagno?” That means, “Where is the bathroom?”

I don’t care where in the world you find yourself, as long as you know how to find the bathroom, you’re OK.

Ironically, lately I’ve been looking into learning Spanish. It’s so commonly spoken now that it would be incredibly useful to get familiar with it.

My old teacher would love it, saying “I told you so” — in Spanish, of course. But how to learn it after all these years? Leave it to the library to come to the rescue, as usual.

If you go to this web site — https://library.transparent.com/guilderlandny/ — you will find a wonderful app called Transparent Language. Here you can learn many different languages, all for free. How great is that?

I’ve already started Spanish. They start with how to pronounce each letter and build up from there. This is a terrific resource, and another reason why libraries are number one in my book, no pun intended.

An interesting thing about Spanish is the nouns have gender — that is, they are either male or female. Male nouns end in O, female nouns end in A, but it’s not always that straightforward.

Wouldn’t you think “house” is male? But the word for house is “casa.” Boys and girls are ninos and ninas, so that’s easy.

Sometimes it depends on the context. For example, the Pope is el Papa if it’s a masculine context, and la papa if feminine. Having to think about the gender of nouns is something I don’t normally worry about, but as an “el estudiante” of Spanish I might have to.

The really odd thing about learning any new language is how to deal with idioms. An idiom is a phrase or expression whose meaning cannot be understood from the literal definition of its individual words.

The worst thing about idioms is that they are often specific to an individual language or culture, making it very difficult for non-native speakers of that language to understand them.

Let’s look at some common idioms. Imagine if you were teaching English to a non-native English speaker and you had to explain these:

— “Under the weather”: feeling sick or ill;

— “Spill the beans”: to tell a secret;

— “Cost an arm and a leg”: something that is very expensive;

— “Beat around the bush”: avoiding a topic directly;

— “Let the cat out of the bag”: unwittingly revealing a secret.

Idioms make it really hard to become proficient in a new language. This is why the best way to learn is to speak the language with people who speak the language. That’s how you can pick up on idioms or phrases. Now if native language speakers would just slow down.

If I haven’t convinced you yet of trying to get on board with Latin culture and influence, here is something to reel you in. We are fortunate in the Capitol District to have many free concerts during the summer.

There is a Latin band that plays all over the place and is just outstanding. The band is called “Alex Torres and his Latin Orchestra.” Find out about them here: https://alextorres.com/.

 I’ve seen this band several times and they are incredible. Tremendous horn section, excellent musicians, and multiple vocalists. When you see this band live there is always a huge crowd right in front of the stage dancing and having a great time.

I don’t see how it would be possible to hear them play and not come away with a huge appreciation for Latin culture. Those folks like to have fun. My kind of people.

I don’t know if I’ll ever become fluent in Spanish, but I’m sure having a lot of fun trying. Me apasiona aprender siempre!