#languagegeeks

Let me preface this blog post by saying it’s probably not going to interest many people beyond English grammar geeks or Spanish language geeks. Deal with it. It’s my blog.

So I came to Spain with some basic traveler’s phrases, and I had maybe 5-10 verbs (have, want, is). In fact, one of the first things I learned in my Spanish class here is that the verb “to be” or “is” has two forms: permanent (es) and temporary (está). For example,  “She is American” (Soy Americano) and “She is tired” (Estoy cansado) are two different verbs: one for the temporary state of being tired and one for the permanent state of being from America. I still don’t really have a solid grasp on the difference, but I like to think that is because I am very zen. What is the real line between permanent and temporary? Isn’t everything ultimately temporary in life?

In general, I find Spanish to be like English with a mixed up word order. For example, adjectives go after the noun instead of before—I think by the time we leave I will be able to do this. Right now, beyond agua fria (which I say all the time), I always wind up saying the adjective before the noun. Also, the order of the subject in relation to the verb is much less important than English. Direct objects can go in front of verbs, except when they don’t. A question can be asked with the subject or object either before or after the verb.

And then there’s the challenge of matching gender and singular/plural nouns. Word have genders here. So you just have to memorize what is masculine and what is feminine. For example, mesa means table. But if I wanted to say a “white table”, I would say mesa blanca, and if I wanted to say “white tables”, I would say mesas blancas, changing the adjective to plural. But if I wanted to say white dog (perro), I would have to change the adjective to end in “o” for blanco for masculine and match it to singular or plural. And so it goes with the word “our” for example. In English, we only have one word: our. In Spanish we have nuestro, nuestra, nuestros, nuestras for each of the four types of nouns it could modify.

The biggest shift between the two languages is in verbs. I understood the concept of conjugation, but hadn’t really done it since high school.  We do not have so many verb conjugations in English, but we do have some. Most of the time English verbs do not change much between the types of the first person (I), second person (you), third person (he, she), first person plural (we), and third person plural (they). For example in English: I have, you have, she has, we have, they have. You see only one change from “has” to “have”. But in Spanish, it is: Tengo, Tienes, Tiene, Tenemos, Tienen. Every single verb form is a different word.

I find this both inefficient (because there are so many words for the same verb), but also more efficient because the subject is inside the verb itself. To say “I love you.” is te amo. My son asked why wouldn’t it be “Yo amo”, because it is “I love you” and “Yo” means “I”. Where’s the “I”? I explained that objects are not always after the verb and the subject is inside the verb. So the “I” is inside the word “amo” because it is conjugated to first-person. And the subject “te” which is the “you” is before the verb. See what I mean? It’s efficient and complicated at the same time.

I also enjoy that you can’t do word-for-word literal translations because sometimes the entire sentence structure does not work in English. For example, double negatives are required: “No quiero el gato nunca.” technically translates to “I don’t want a cat never.” But it means “I never want a cat.” And of course, those of you who speak Spanish will have noticed that earlier I skipped over a complete verb form that does not exist in English at all: the plural you (vosotros). Use vosotros when you want to say “You are doing something”, but you mean many people, not one person. The closest thing in English is “Y’all”, but again, this is something that is informal slang in English but required in Spanish.

Even better, this week we learned about a whole sentence form that simply doesn’t exist in English. “Me gusta la cama.” (I like the bed) and “Me gustan los tacos.” (I like tacos.) In this case, the verb “gusta” doesn’t conjugate as described above—it just changes from singular (gusta) to plural (gustan) based on the thing being liked. And you change the word in front of the verb based on who is doing the liking: me, te, le, nos, etc. So the object of the sentence is actually the subject of the sentence. It’s fantastic—and it totally can’t happen in English.

But truly, the thing I am most improved at is nodding at people like I know exactly what they are talking about. You can’t even tell I have no idea what they are saying. It’s very impressive. My Spanish is much improved in this sense…