I know that we’re supposed to pick our battles with our children. That when we do, we’re supposed to win every time. That some things are best not turned into battles in the first place. And I try to remember that, but some things just drive me batshit crazy.
With Secondo, one of them is eating with utensils. Or not eating with utensils. It drives me crazy that he often flat-out refuses to. That he will grab a handfuls of oatmeal and gleefully squish gobs of it between his fingers with obvious enjoyment and then wipe his hands on his shirt. That I’ve occasionally caught his overly-motherly Salvadoran nanny feeding him in order to prevent messes from happening, even though I’ve asked her not to. That my friend with the toddler who eats soup without spilling a drop makes comments about children needing to learn table manners and then glances pointedly at my kids. I tell myself not to get so frustrated about the whole thing, which is getting harder the older they get, because there are some things they should just be able to do by now, dammit, and it all ties in to my expectations for Secondo and my constant worry about what behavior is just your average three-year-old behavior and what isn’t. Because some of it isn’t. The autism, it always lurks, and it can mess with my mind.
I sit with Secondo and snatch his bowl of food away as he lunges at it with his hands. Con la cuchara, I remind him. Con la cuchara, he repeats, and takes a spoonful. Then he lunges with his hands again, and he’s really, really fast.
Tonight I take a different tack, something I’ve tried before, so it’s not exactly new. I will be positive, I will not let my frustration show. The boys are eating spaghetti, and Secondo takes a bite with the fork. ¡Excelente! I yell, and he looks at me and giggles. I’ve never been quite this enthusiastic, and I've obviously hit upon the right word. ¡Excelente! he repeats. Then takes another bite. ¡Excelente! I squeal, and this time I clap my hands and praise him profusely. Now Primo is laughing and wants in on it, too, so when he takes a bite: ¡Excelente!
And we are all having so much fun and laughing so hard that I don’t notice when Secondo grabs a handful of spaghetti, like a flash. I grab the bowl. It goes flying. There is spaghetti everywhere. I put my head in my hands and take a deep breath. Several seconds go by.
No tan excelente, Primo observes, finally, breaking the silence. His tone is sober.
Not so excellent, indeed. But at least now I am laughing as I clean up the spaghetti.
Showing posts with label Language matters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Language matters. Show all posts
Friday, December 19, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Musings on the Boll Weevil
[Edited to thank my friend Noelle, for pointing out that it's boll weevil, not boil weevil. I'm shaking my head in amazement that I could be SO WRONG about a word for SO LONG. Even though I looked it up beforehand just to be sure. Sheesh.]
This is the best English/Spanish dictionary ever. I am a translator and an interpreter, so I have shelves full of dictionaries, but this is the only will not travel without. I bought it for myself as a graduation gift when I got my MA, and it's what I always recommend to people looking to take the next step, when they find that their average bilingual dictionary is no longer all that helpful. It is by no means comprehensive, but in in you will find all kinds of useful general and technical terminology, like end borrower, input-output, straddle carrier. And of course, boll weevil.
For some reason, whenever I open this dictionary, it seems to fall open at gorgojo, which is a boll weevil. The entry is near the top of the page, and after so many repetitions it felt like the word had been burned into my brain. Ha ha, I would joke to myself. If it ever comes up, I will be ready. I will be ready, and I will dazzle everyone by coming up with the right word for boll weevil without so much as batting an eye.
And then, of course, it came up. I was interpreting at an informal gathering for a few Latin American visitors who were doing a Q & A session with a high-school class. One of the students mentioned the boll weevils, and of course, I could not for the life of me remember what the hell it was. I motioned desperately to my colleague, who helped me out, but my moment had come and gone. And I was bummed, even though remembering the word for boll weevil is less important during an informal chat with high-schoolers than it is during, say, a highly technical conference about the boll weevil.
That's how my job goes. Sometimes a word I know, a word I know well, just won't come to me when I need it. It's one reason you need to be good at looking things up on the go, it's why you need to have good colleagues backing you up, and you have to be able to ask for and accept help if you need it.
The nice thing, though, is that it works both ways, and I often experience the flip side, like I did the other day. An attorney who was questioning a witness asked him if he was colorblind. That word often stumps me, since it doesn't come up that often. And yet this time, the word daltónico just rolled off my tongue. Good thing, too, since it came up many times and ended up being an important issue.
[The link to the glossary will take you to the Google Book Search page, which I just discovered, and I love it. If you're interested, it will allow you to peruse a pretty hefty chunk of the book. Pretty amazing.]
[I'm done geeking out about dictionaries now. Good night.]
This is the best English/Spanish dictionary ever. I am a translator and an interpreter, so I have shelves full of dictionaries, but this is the only will not travel without. I bought it for myself as a graduation gift when I got my MA, and it's what I always recommend to people looking to take the next step, when they find that their average bilingual dictionary is no longer all that helpful. It is by no means comprehensive, but in in you will find all kinds of useful general and technical terminology, like end borrower, input-output, straddle carrier. And of course, boll weevil.
For some reason, whenever I open this dictionary, it seems to fall open at gorgojo, which is a boll weevil. The entry is near the top of the page, and after so many repetitions it felt like the word had been burned into my brain. Ha ha, I would joke to myself. If it ever comes up, I will be ready. I will be ready, and I will dazzle everyone by coming up with the right word for boll weevil without so much as batting an eye.
And then, of course, it came up. I was interpreting at an informal gathering for a few Latin American visitors who were doing a Q & A session with a high-school class. One of the students mentioned the boll weevils, and of course, I could not for the life of me remember what the hell it was. I motioned desperately to my colleague, who helped me out, but my moment had come and gone. And I was bummed, even though remembering the word for boll weevil is less important during an informal chat with high-schoolers than it is during, say, a highly technical conference about the boll weevil.
That's how my job goes. Sometimes a word I know, a word I know well, just won't come to me when I need it. It's one reason you need to be good at looking things up on the go, it's why you need to have good colleagues backing you up, and you have to be able to ask for and accept help if you need it.
The nice thing, though, is that it works both ways, and I often experience the flip side, like I did the other day. An attorney who was questioning a witness asked him if he was colorblind. That word often stumps me, since it doesn't come up that often. And yet this time, the word daltónico just rolled off my tongue. Good thing, too, since it came up many times and ended up being an important issue.
[The link to the glossary will take you to the Google Book Search page, which I just discovered, and I love it. If you're interested, it will allow you to peruse a pretty hefty chunk of the book. Pretty amazing.]
[I'm done geeking out about dictionaries now. Good night.]
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Embarrassing Stories
A few years ago I was at a professional conference, surrounded by translators and interpreters. I love attending conferences—they’re expensive, but I need the continuing education credits to keep up my certification, and I always enjoy the experience. I come away feeling invigorated, at least for a while.
We sat down to lunch in the big ballroom and listened to the keynote speaker tell a story, a story about a gaffe he made when he was just learning Spanish. He’d done something or other and was feeling embarrassed about it, so he said, “Estoy embarazado.” Funny! Because (false cognate alert!) embarazado does not mean “embarrassed,” it means pregnant. Oops. The crowd tittered politely, but I was unimpressed.
The thing is, that happens to just about everyone who’s learning Spanish. When people who are learning the language tell me that story, I always laugh, because it is indeed funny and the fact that it happens to everyone doesn’t make it any less embarrassing if it happens to you. And it makes for a good icebreaker. But I was in a room full of interpreters, so my thought was, really? That’s the best you could do? Because interpreters can tell some really good stories about the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to them.
Here’s mine:
I used to interpret for a lot of anti-terrorism courses--definitely not the kind of work I ever imagined I’d do when I was interpreting in a nice, quiet booth in graduate school. It involved lots and lots of time on the shooting range. I loved the work, even though it was physically demanding. There was a mechanical precision to everything on the shooting range, and a rhythm I got into when interpreting the instructors’ commands, barking short, neat orders into my radio transmitter to all of the students on the firing line. No one did anything, anything at all, unless it had been ordered by the instructor.
We stood uprange one day, the line of students preparing their magazines and weapons for the march up to the firing line, an instructor and I behind them. The students had loaded two or three pistol magazines with ammunition, checked their gear and awaited the order, which finally came.
“LOAD YOUR WEAPONS!” bellowed the instructor.
“¡CAGUEN LAS ARMAS!” I shouted, just as forcefully.
And then I watched helplessly and turned beet-red as the rigid, perfectly straight line of men fell apart as all twenty-four men in fatigues doubled over in laughter.
The instructor, a former cop who was twice my size and who intimidated the hell out of me, turned to me and asked, “What did you say? What did you say??”
It was a slip of the tongue, I explained. I left out the r. Carguen las armas = load your weapons. Caguen las armas = shit on your weapons.
I underestimated the instructor. He wasn’t angry or even exasperated—he was mostly horrified and intrigued that leaving out one letter could make that much of a difference.
I had developed a rapport with the group during the course, which meant that they teased me mercilessly all day. I thought I’d never hear the end of it.
Qué embarazada.
We sat down to lunch in the big ballroom and listened to the keynote speaker tell a story, a story about a gaffe he made when he was just learning Spanish. He’d done something or other and was feeling embarrassed about it, so he said, “Estoy embarazado.” Funny! Because (false cognate alert!) embarazado does not mean “embarrassed,” it means pregnant. Oops. The crowd tittered politely, but I was unimpressed.
The thing is, that happens to just about everyone who’s learning Spanish. When people who are learning the language tell me that story, I always laugh, because it is indeed funny and the fact that it happens to everyone doesn’t make it any less embarrassing if it happens to you. And it makes for a good icebreaker. But I was in a room full of interpreters, so my thought was, really? That’s the best you could do? Because interpreters can tell some really good stories about the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to them.
Here’s mine:
I used to interpret for a lot of anti-terrorism courses--definitely not the kind of work I ever imagined I’d do when I was interpreting in a nice, quiet booth in graduate school. It involved lots and lots of time on the shooting range. I loved the work, even though it was physically demanding. There was a mechanical precision to everything on the shooting range, and a rhythm I got into when interpreting the instructors’ commands, barking short, neat orders into my radio transmitter to all of the students on the firing line. No one did anything, anything at all, unless it had been ordered by the instructor.
We stood uprange one day, the line of students preparing their magazines and weapons for the march up to the firing line, an instructor and I behind them. The students had loaded two or three pistol magazines with ammunition, checked their gear and awaited the order, which finally came.
“LOAD YOUR WEAPONS!” bellowed the instructor.
“¡CAGUEN LAS ARMAS!” I shouted, just as forcefully.
And then I watched helplessly and turned beet-red as the rigid, perfectly straight line of men fell apart as all twenty-four men in fatigues doubled over in laughter.
The instructor, a former cop who was twice my size and who intimidated the hell out of me, turned to me and asked, “What did you say? What did you say??”
It was a slip of the tongue, I explained. I left out the r. Carguen las armas = load your weapons. Caguen las armas = shit on your weapons.
I underestimated the instructor. He wasn’t angry or even exasperated—he was mostly horrified and intrigued that leaving out one letter could make that much of a difference.
I had developed a rapport with the group during the course, which meant that they teased me mercilessly all day. I thought I’d never hear the end of it.
Qué embarazada.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Social Niceties
It is a hot Saturday morning, and I am at the park with Primo and Secondo. We are multitasking--P is running errands and I am letting the boys run off some steam. Secondo, however, is in full wandering mode, which means he takes off every so often, oblivious to where I am, inspecting trees and strollers, drinking out of other kids' sippy cups before I catch up, fed up and frustrated. Not because what he's doing is so bad--in fact, he hasn't wandered like this for a while--but because my running after Secondo means that Primo is alone on a crowded playground. And mostly because it seems wrong that I have to trust Primo, who is all of two-and-a-half, to be OK by himself while I chase after his brother. Not just today, but a lot. I fear I am burdening him with that responsibility already.
We head back towards the playground equipment, where Primo is, in fact, OK. He and his brother have a grand time running back and forth on a little bridge between slides. They are soon joined by a little girl who looks to be a little older then they are. And in his haste to get across, Primo pushes her.
She looks at me, wide-eyed. "No pushing!" she yells, in the tone of a child who has heard the phrase a million times before. And she is right, of course. I grab Primo by the shoulders and give him a good scolding, in Spanish. And then I switch to Spanglish. I turn him to face the little girl and say, "Diga I'm sorry."
And then I hold my breath, and cross my fingers. Because he's never said that before. I've never made him say it before. He knows lo siento, but that isn't going to cut it with the indignant girl who's just been pushed. So I give it a try.
"I'm sorry," he says, contritely even, and I breathe a sigh of relief and give him a hug. Again, he's come through for me. Again.
The incident did get me thinking. Though the boys get English from their father, they get so much Spanish from their nanny and from me. Which I love. But I've realized lately that that has meant that they don't even know how to handle basic social interactions in English. Sometimes they'll say "bye-bye," but mostly it's adiós. And while the women at our local shops have found their greetings of "¡Hola, señora!" charming, it's time for me to make a concerted effort. So in the past couple of days, we've been working on hello, excuse me, and of course, I'm sorry. We'll see how that goes.
We head back towards the playground equipment, where Primo is, in fact, OK. He and his brother have a grand time running back and forth on a little bridge between slides. They are soon joined by a little girl who looks to be a little older then they are. And in his haste to get across, Primo pushes her.
She looks at me, wide-eyed. "No pushing!" she yells, in the tone of a child who has heard the phrase a million times before. And she is right, of course. I grab Primo by the shoulders and give him a good scolding, in Spanish. And then I switch to Spanglish. I turn him to face the little girl and say, "Diga I'm sorry."
And then I hold my breath, and cross my fingers. Because he's never said that before. I've never made him say it before. He knows lo siento, but that isn't going to cut it with the indignant girl who's just been pushed. So I give it a try.
"I'm sorry," he says, contritely even, and I breathe a sigh of relief and give him a hug. Again, he's come through for me. Again.
The incident did get me thinking. Though the boys get English from their father, they get so much Spanish from their nanny and from me. Which I love. But I've realized lately that that has meant that they don't even know how to handle basic social interactions in English. Sometimes they'll say "bye-bye," but mostly it's adiós. And while the women at our local shops have found their greetings of "¡Hola, señora!" charming, it's time for me to make a concerted effort. So in the past couple of days, we've been working on hello, excuse me, and of course, I'm sorry. We'll see how that goes.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
I'd like my teeth brushed in English, please.
Brushing a toddler's teeth is a royal pain. When I hadn't found a good way to do it yet I searched for advice on the subject and found suggestions on blogs, my local parenting listservs and the like. There were all kinds of crazy suggestions, but the one that seemed to be common to all of them was: Hey! Pretend there's an animal in your toddler's mouth! Tell him you need to reach waaay back there with the toothbrush and "get" the tiger that's hiding in his mouth!
I guess that worked for some people, or they wouldn't have suggested it. But I didn't even try it because it just sounded silly, and our evening teeth-brushing sessions degenerated into wrestling matches. (I love, love, love having twins, but one petty reason I'm slightly jealous of mothers of singletons? They only have one set of teeth to brush at night. I've always been somewhat overwhelmed by TWO sets of toddler teeth.)
Primo, though, is obsessed with numbers, and one night, I happened upon a brilliant solution, which consisted of, Hey! Let's see how high Mama can count while brushing your teeth! It worked. That boy is so enamored of the number one hundred that I think he would endure practically anything to hear me count that high. And Secondo, who was watching the merriment in the next crib over and giggling all the while, wanted in on the action, so the method worked with him too, although his limit was always around fifty, not a hundred.
The other day, though, Secondo rebelled and clenched his teeth together right after I started brushing. So I moved on to Primo, and started with my usual enthusiastic Uno! Dos! Tres!
Except he was having none of that, either. Instead, he grabbed the toothbrush from me and commanded: "English!" So I started over, in English, and we counted to one hundred, as usual. And though Secondo doesn't have the "English! Español!" thing down the way Primo does, he let me know by exclaiming, "One! Two! Three!" that he would like his teeth brushed in English too, please. I obliged, and I'll be damned if it didn't work.
I'm such a stickler for speaking Spanish. But for now, the boys apparently want their teeth brushed in English. So I'm going to go with that, if only for the sake of dental hygiene.
(Did I just write an entire post about brushing toddlers' teeth? I think I did. Anyone reading might want to just skip this one. Yeah.)
I guess that worked for some people, or they wouldn't have suggested it. But I didn't even try it because it just sounded silly, and our evening teeth-brushing sessions degenerated into wrestling matches. (I love, love, love having twins, but one petty reason I'm slightly jealous of mothers of singletons? They only have one set of teeth to brush at night. I've always been somewhat overwhelmed by TWO sets of toddler teeth.)
Primo, though, is obsessed with numbers, and one night, I happened upon a brilliant solution, which consisted of, Hey! Let's see how high Mama can count while brushing your teeth! It worked. That boy is so enamored of the number one hundred that I think he would endure practically anything to hear me count that high. And Secondo, who was watching the merriment in the next crib over and giggling all the while, wanted in on the action, so the method worked with him too, although his limit was always around fifty, not a hundred.
The other day, though, Secondo rebelled and clenched his teeth together right after I started brushing. So I moved on to Primo, and started with my usual enthusiastic Uno! Dos! Tres!
Except he was having none of that, either. Instead, he grabbed the toothbrush from me and commanded: "English!" So I started over, in English, and we counted to one hundred, as usual. And though Secondo doesn't have the "English! Español!" thing down the way Primo does, he let me know by exclaiming, "One! Two! Three!" that he would like his teeth brushed in English too, please. I obliged, and I'll be damned if it didn't work.
I'm such a stickler for speaking Spanish. But for now, the boys apparently want their teeth brushed in English. So I'm going to go with that, if only for the sake of dental hygiene.
(Did I just write an entire post about brushing toddlers' teeth? I think I did. Anyone reading might want to just skip this one. Yeah.)
Thursday, June 5, 2008
And Mama does a little jig
I have a post brewing about the boys' favorite books in Spanish, and how I'm obsessed with finding new books for them. I read to them in English as well, but a lot of their favorite books to read with me are in Spanish.
We have a few books that include a Spanish and an English version of the story. And in very few, select cases, I sight-translate books for them--that is, the original is only in English, but I read it out loud in Spanish. (Yes, another form of translation/interpretation, a kind of hybrid.) I do that with some of the Little Quack books, because we do have two of them in Spanish and they're so repetitive that the ones in English are very easy to sight translate. Also, they've been favorites of the boys since they were about a year old.
But this post is about a small victory tonight. I was reading Little Quack's New Friend to the boys in Spanish before bedtime when P walked in the room. Primo grabbed the book, took it to his dad, and requested, "English!" P read it to them in English and then left the room. Whereupon Primo brought the book back to me and happily demanded, "Español!"
Primo has been code-switching depending on who's around for a while now, and Secondo has started to do so as well. But tonight you could have knocked me over with a feather.
My one thought was: Wow. This is working.
Yay.
We have a few books that include a Spanish and an English version of the story. And in very few, select cases, I sight-translate books for them--that is, the original is only in English, but I read it out loud in Spanish. (Yes, another form of translation/interpretation, a kind of hybrid.) I do that with some of the Little Quack books, because we do have two of them in Spanish and they're so repetitive that the ones in English are very easy to sight translate. Also, they've been favorites of the boys since they were about a year old.
But this post is about a small victory tonight. I was reading Little Quack's New Friend to the boys in Spanish before bedtime when P walked in the room. Primo grabbed the book, took it to his dad, and requested, "English!" P read it to them in English and then left the room. Whereupon Primo brought the book back to me and happily demanded, "Español!"
Primo has been code-switching depending on who's around for a while now, and Secondo has started to do so as well. But tonight you could have knocked me over with a feather.
My one thought was: Wow. This is working.
Yay.
Friday, May 16, 2008
La Compu
A couple of days ago, Primo climbed up on his chair at the dining room table, made himself comfortable in front of my MacBook and then yelled:
"¡No! ¡La compu no! ¡No toque el monitor! ¡Hay que esperar! ¡Bájese de ahí!"
(Translation: No! Not the computer! Don't touch the monitor! You have to wait! Get down from there!)
Then he looked at me expectantly.
Me: Dude, I was going to let you use the computer. Sheesh.
I wasn't sure if I should be impressed that he strung so many phrases together, because really, it was nothing more than a perfect impression of Mama.
[That boy loves my computer, my cell phone (though I have to be careful because he racked up $20 in cell phone charges one month), calculators, the digital camera, and, needless to say, the iPod Touch. Both of the boys love looking at photos on the Touch and especially love flicking them back and forth on the screen. I got them toy cell phones in an attempt to reclaim mine, but they were not fooled for an instant.]
"¡No! ¡La compu no! ¡No toque el monitor! ¡Hay que esperar! ¡Bájese de ahí!"
(Translation: No! Not the computer! Don't touch the monitor! You have to wait! Get down from there!)
Then he looked at me expectantly.
Me: Dude, I was going to let you use the computer. Sheesh.
I wasn't sure if I should be impressed that he strung so many phrases together, because really, it was nothing more than a perfect impression of Mama.
[That boy loves my computer, my cell phone (though I have to be careful because he racked up $20 in cell phone charges one month), calculators, the digital camera, and, needless to say, the iPod Touch. Both of the boys love looking at photos on the Touch and especially love flicking them back and forth on the screen. I got them toy cell phones in an attempt to reclaim mine, but they were not fooled for an instant.]
Monday, March 31, 2008
Button Bellies and Pound Cakes
My entire life, it seems, people have made fun of my accent.
When I was growing up in Costa Rica, the kids in school made fun of my little gringuita accent. And as a Costa Rican, I can’t roll my r’s to save my life and I am teased mercilessly by other Latin Americans. I lived and worked in France, and the French had plenty to say about my accent there. Then I joined the Peace Corps and lived in a French-speaking African country, which made my French accent so wacky that the French didn’t know what to make of it. So yes, I know what it’s like to have an accent. Even though I’m used to the teasing and am pretty good-humored about it (or try to be), in principle I think that making fun of someone’s accent is not very nice.
But the thing is, my mom’s accent is so frickin’ cute. It matches her personality: She’s a native Spanish speaker, a (maybe) five-foot-tall Latina who talks a million miles a minute, always excitedly, never without using her hands, and she taught me all the swear words I know (at an early age, too). More than the accent, though, the word combinations she has been known to use in English have become part of our family’s lexicon. I blame my dad; even though he was mad as hell whenever someone made fun of his very gringo accent, he found my mom’s quirks so endearing that he never corrected her and in fact, encouraged her.
She was convinced the word for navel was button belly.
She used to ask for her leftovers in a baggie dog.
She was sure my dad suffered from rage road.
She refuses to say the word turtle anymore because it’s hard for her to say and we’ve all given her such a hard time about it (not that the word turtle comes up very often in casual conversation).
Last night, we were using a calling card to call Costa Rica, which involved punching in a long string of numbers and symbols. The call wasn’t going through, my mom had had enough and began yelling, “Pound cake! Pound cake! Are you sure you pressed the pound cake?” When I looked at her and started laughing, her response was, “Well, don’t you think it should be called the pound cake?”
Well, now I do.
When I was growing up in Costa Rica, the kids in school made fun of my little gringuita accent. And as a Costa Rican, I can’t roll my r’s to save my life and I am teased mercilessly by other Latin Americans. I lived and worked in France, and the French had plenty to say about my accent there. Then I joined the Peace Corps and lived in a French-speaking African country, which made my French accent so wacky that the French didn’t know what to make of it. So yes, I know what it’s like to have an accent. Even though I’m used to the teasing and am pretty good-humored about it (or try to be), in principle I think that making fun of someone’s accent is not very nice.
But the thing is, my mom’s accent is so frickin’ cute. It matches her personality: She’s a native Spanish speaker, a (maybe) five-foot-tall Latina who talks a million miles a minute, always excitedly, never without using her hands, and she taught me all the swear words I know (at an early age, too). More than the accent, though, the word combinations she has been known to use in English have become part of our family’s lexicon. I blame my dad; even though he was mad as hell whenever someone made fun of his very gringo accent, he found my mom’s quirks so endearing that he never corrected her and in fact, encouraged her.
She was convinced the word for navel was button belly.
She used to ask for her leftovers in a baggie dog.
She was sure my dad suffered from rage road.
She refuses to say the word turtle anymore because it’s hard for her to say and we’ve all given her such a hard time about it (not that the word turtle comes up very often in casual conversation).
Last night, we were using a calling card to call Costa Rica, which involved punching in a long string of numbers and symbols. The call wasn’t going through, my mom had had enough and began yelling, “Pound cake! Pound cake! Are you sure you pressed the pound cake?” When I looked at her and started laughing, her response was, “Well, don’t you think it should be called the pound cake?”
Well, now I do.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
And it's kind of an annoying CD, too.
I often feel for the boys. They’re both so vocal (they’re at very different stages in their language development, and they both have such different approaches, though that will be another post), and yet so much of the time, I have no earthly idea what they’re trying to tell me. I thought this wasn’t supposed to happen. I thought my status as (Omniscient) Mother meant that I would automatically understand everything, and I would interpret what they said for everyone else, the way other mothers seem to do.
And yet, I seem to miss a lot, even when what they’re saying is so unbelievably obvious. Especially when they bust out with something I’ve never heard them say before. Take the exchange I had with Primo today, in Spanish:
Keen: Primo, what kind of music would you like to listen to?
Primo: Arroz Leche.
Keen: No, you just had milk. You’re not having any more for now. What CD would you like Mama to put in the CD player?
Primo: Arroz Leche.
Keen: No, no milk right now. How about some music?
Primo: Arroz Leche.
Keen: No, NO MORE MILK! MUSIC!
Primo: Arroz Leche.
Keen: Ohhhhh. Arroz con Leche. [The same CD we just finished listening to.] Oh. Right. OK, then.
My penance? Listening to the Arroz con Leche CD about fifteen times today, once for every time it was requested. OK, that’s an exaggeration. But only a slight one.
And yet, I seem to miss a lot, even when what they’re saying is so unbelievably obvious. Especially when they bust out with something I’ve never heard them say before. Take the exchange I had with Primo today, in Spanish:
Keen: Primo, what kind of music would you like to listen to?
Primo: Arroz Leche.
Keen: No, you just had milk. You’re not having any more for now. What CD would you like Mama to put in the CD player?
Primo: Arroz Leche.
Keen: No, no milk right now. How about some music?
Primo: Arroz Leche.
Keen: No, NO MORE MILK! MUSIC!
Primo: Arroz Leche.
Keen: Ohhhhh. Arroz con Leche. [The same CD we just finished listening to.] Oh. Right. OK, then.
My penance? Listening to the Arroz con Leche CD about fifteen times today, once for every time it was requested. OK, that’s an exaggeration. But only a slight one.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
I’m just like e.e. cummings. No, wait. I’m so not.
I just finished a big translation project. It was an awesome job. Good pay, flexible deadlines. Also, I wasn’t working through an agency. I was working with a group of colleagues I really like and respect. We were organized, kept track of who was doing what, and then edited each others’ work. It doesn’t get any better than that.
I got one of my translations back, though, and was mortified. I apparently can’t capitalize for shit. I was all over the place, and my colleague/editor sent me a very kind e-mail in which she quoted the Chicago Manual of Style extensively. I sent back an e-mail in which I joked about my Excessive Capitalization Syndrome.
It wasn’t such a huge deal, I suppose, but I was really annoyed with myself for being sloppy. I’d even looked it up online, where I got conflicting information, so I went with my gut. Ha.
Whenever I doubt myself, I try to remind myself that I’m just demanding a lot of myself. I want to turn in good work, which is a good thing. But obviously, I need a style manual. It’s kind of appalling, given my reference library, that I don’t own one. I suppose you can’t go wrong with the Chicago Manual of Style? Definitely something I need to look into when I get back.
Oh, and when I doubt myself, I start to have issues with hyphens and apostrophes, too. And I tend to overuse commas. Yeah, I need a style manual, pronto. I think I need to read it cover to cover. Or maybe I mean cover-to-cover. See?
I got one of my translations back, though, and was mortified. I apparently can’t capitalize for shit. I was all over the place, and my colleague/editor sent me a very kind e-mail in which she quoted the Chicago Manual of Style extensively. I sent back an e-mail in which I joked about my Excessive Capitalization Syndrome.
It wasn’t such a huge deal, I suppose, but I was really annoyed with myself for being sloppy. I’d even looked it up online, where I got conflicting information, so I went with my gut. Ha.
Whenever I doubt myself, I try to remind myself that I’m just demanding a lot of myself. I want to turn in good work, which is a good thing. But obviously, I need a style manual. It’s kind of appalling, given my reference library, that I don’t own one. I suppose you can’t go wrong with the Chicago Manual of Style? Definitely something I need to look into when I get back.
Oh, and when I doubt myself, I start to have issues with hyphens and apostrophes, too. And I tend to overuse commas. Yeah, I need a style manual, pronto. I think I need to read it cover to cover. Or maybe I mean cover-to-cover. See?
Sunday, December 30, 2007
A Few Musings on Language
For someone who is hell-bent on teaching her children Spanish, never mind the fact that I’m a professional translator/interpreter, you would think I’d have done tons of research on the subject, but I haven’t, really. Other than a few articles I’ve read online and in the newspaper, and the information I learned at a wonderful conference on the subject where I was lucky enough to interpret, I really haven’t looked into it. In my case, I’m going mostly on my own experience and what worked for my parents, and what I’ve seen work or not work for others.
My parents used what is now known as the one-parent-one-language approach with my brother and me, though I’m not sure that term existed back in the seventies. We lived in the U.S. until I was eight, and the rule was: Spanish with my mom, English with my dad. Period. The other unbreakable rule was, nothing but Spanish was to be spoken at the dinner table. They were absolute hardasses when it came to both of those rules. If we spoke English at the table, they pretended not to understand and we had to repeat ourselves in Spanish, with their help if we needed it.
There are a lot of things I remember about learning both languages growing up, and the emotional pull of those memories is pretty strong. For one thing, I remember not liking the feeling of standing out. When we lived in the U.S., I really wanted to speak what my friends at school spoke. I didn’t want to be different. I spoke to my brother in English, and that was our special language. When we moved to Costa Rica, the tables were turned. Then we had to speak English at the dinner table. All of a sudden, Spanish was the language that made us fit in, and my brother and I started speaking Spanish with each other, which we still do today. Speaking English would feel unnatural at this point.
My parents owned a business and made an OK living, but they were the kind of people who didn’t need much and actually did without a few things so that we could afford others. Our house was not in the greatest shape and they weren’t so big on home improvement, even though that would have been money well spent, but boy, they made sure we traveled. When we lived in the U.S, we traveled to Costa Rica, and vice versa. The connection to our family, languages and cultures was incredibly important to them. So were books. As a child, I remember all the stories and poems my mother read us in Spanish. In Costa Rica, there was exactly one English-language bookstore in the country when we moved there, and those books were not cheap. Yet my parents took us there regularly and there were no limits on what we could buy. We took Spanish classes in California, and in Costa Rica my parents paid a bundle for our education at a chi-chi bilingual private school (I hated it, which is another story, but I realize I got a great education). When I hear so many second-generation children with surnames like López and García say, “Gee, I wish my parents had taught me Spanish,” I’m all too aware of the tremendous effort it takes to make it actually happen.
Right now, Primo and Secondo speak way more Spanish than English, which I love. I’m strictly enforcing the “Spanish with Mama” rule, and I also plan on being a hardass about it, though I sometimes feel like I’m being rude when we’re out in public. I’ve seen several parents relax that rule, then relax it some more, and it seems to me that then it’s all downhill from there. The boys’ babysitter doesn’t even speak English. Their language skills are coming along and they amaze me every day.
I find my own experience learning two languages as a child both encouraging and scary. For one thing, though I never really rebelled, I remember that feeling of not wanting to feel different. That’s kind of hard to counteract. Plus, Spanish was hard when I was very young. English was easy. That was what I wanted to speak. Also, we moved to a Spanish-speaking country when I was eight, which made all the difference. That will most likely never happen for my kids, so I feel like I’ll be fighting an uphill battle, especially once they start school. I listened to an awesome program on NPR the other day that referred to that as a “tidal wave” of English. The speakers also talked about making the second language fun. I’m as obsessed with books as my parents were. I just dropped a chunk of change on books in Spanish at the bookstore in Costa Rica. The boys’ great-aunt and great-uncle gave them $30, which I spent on more books in Spanish that I found on Amazon. I tend to buy books every time someone gives them cash. My in-laws believe in buying them bonds, I believe in books.
Reading what I’ve written, it strikes me that I may be taking all of this too seriously. It’s just so important to me, for many reasons. Obviously, for one thing, after all of my parents’ hard work, I got my MA in Conference Interpretation, an achievement which makes me incredibly proud. It wasn't easy. But I don’t just want my boys to learn Spanish because it’s useful. Much of my family doesn’t even speak English. And it’s a part of my heritage, and therefore theirs as well. My dad constantly told my brother and me that we had the best of both worlds. And though it might have sounded cheesy and made me roll my eyes as a teenager, he was absolutely right.
My parents used what is now known as the one-parent-one-language approach with my brother and me, though I’m not sure that term existed back in the seventies. We lived in the U.S. until I was eight, and the rule was: Spanish with my mom, English with my dad. Period. The other unbreakable rule was, nothing but Spanish was to be spoken at the dinner table. They were absolute hardasses when it came to both of those rules. If we spoke English at the table, they pretended not to understand and we had to repeat ourselves in Spanish, with their help if we needed it.
There are a lot of things I remember about learning both languages growing up, and the emotional pull of those memories is pretty strong. For one thing, I remember not liking the feeling of standing out. When we lived in the U.S., I really wanted to speak what my friends at school spoke. I didn’t want to be different. I spoke to my brother in English, and that was our special language. When we moved to Costa Rica, the tables were turned. Then we had to speak English at the dinner table. All of a sudden, Spanish was the language that made us fit in, and my brother and I started speaking Spanish with each other, which we still do today. Speaking English would feel unnatural at this point.
My parents owned a business and made an OK living, but they were the kind of people who didn’t need much and actually did without a few things so that we could afford others. Our house was not in the greatest shape and they weren’t so big on home improvement, even though that would have been money well spent, but boy, they made sure we traveled. When we lived in the U.S, we traveled to Costa Rica, and vice versa. The connection to our family, languages and cultures was incredibly important to them. So were books. As a child, I remember all the stories and poems my mother read us in Spanish. In Costa Rica, there was exactly one English-language bookstore in the country when we moved there, and those books were not cheap. Yet my parents took us there regularly and there were no limits on what we could buy. We took Spanish classes in California, and in Costa Rica my parents paid a bundle for our education at a chi-chi bilingual private school (I hated it, which is another story, but I realize I got a great education). When I hear so many second-generation children with surnames like López and García say, “Gee, I wish my parents had taught me Spanish,” I’m all too aware of the tremendous effort it takes to make it actually happen.
Right now, Primo and Secondo speak way more Spanish than English, which I love. I’m strictly enforcing the “Spanish with Mama” rule, and I also plan on being a hardass about it, though I sometimes feel like I’m being rude when we’re out in public. I’ve seen several parents relax that rule, then relax it some more, and it seems to me that then it’s all downhill from there. The boys’ babysitter doesn’t even speak English. Their language skills are coming along and they amaze me every day.
I find my own experience learning two languages as a child both encouraging and scary. For one thing, though I never really rebelled, I remember that feeling of not wanting to feel different. That’s kind of hard to counteract. Plus, Spanish was hard when I was very young. English was easy. That was what I wanted to speak. Also, we moved to a Spanish-speaking country when I was eight, which made all the difference. That will most likely never happen for my kids, so I feel like I’ll be fighting an uphill battle, especially once they start school. I listened to an awesome program on NPR the other day that referred to that as a “tidal wave” of English. The speakers also talked about making the second language fun. I’m as obsessed with books as my parents were. I just dropped a chunk of change on books in Spanish at the bookstore in Costa Rica. The boys’ great-aunt and great-uncle gave them $30, which I spent on more books in Spanish that I found on Amazon. I tend to buy books every time someone gives them cash. My in-laws believe in buying them bonds, I believe in books.
Reading what I’ve written, it strikes me that I may be taking all of this too seriously. It’s just so important to me, for many reasons. Obviously, for one thing, after all of my parents’ hard work, I got my MA in Conference Interpretation, an achievement which makes me incredibly proud. It wasn't easy. But I don’t just want my boys to learn Spanish because it’s useful. Much of my family doesn’t even speak English. And it’s a part of my heritage, and therefore theirs as well. My dad constantly told my brother and me that we had the best of both worlds. And though it might have sounded cheesy and made me roll my eyes as a teenager, he was absolutely right.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)