La Lengua Franca... Ingles!

An explanation about communicating with Europeans, and North Americans, too, in English.

It is interesting to observe that, for the students from the United States, Spanish is almost always their second language. That is, before starting classes here, they spoke only English. That, or, like me, they previously spoke Spanish but are hear to improve their skills. OK, I can work my way through a Biblical text in Greek, and can make out Latin un pocito. But other than that, only English and Spanish.

Then there are the students from anywhere else in the world. Almost all of them speak English. It is rare that we have a person who is studying Spanish who doesn´t already know English, though I can think of two or three people for whom that is the case -- OK, two German guys, one in his mid-70s, the other in his early 20s. Other than them, everybody speaks English.

So that means that, for the students from Europe and other parts of the world, they are here to learn their third (or forth, or fifth, or seventh) language. Por eso (as they say in Spanish -- for this), there is a LOT of English spoken in the school -- sometimes even in classes. Now, during the breaks, I can understand. It´s a break! Still, I think it is better to speak Spanish in order to sharpen one´s skills.

Unfortunately, I often get caught-up in English conversations in the breaks because the folks from my class don´t speak Spanish very well. That´s the BIG problem with being able to speak very well, but having to go through the lower classes to review grammar.

I met a fellow from Florida last night who is graduating after 6 months of study here. He´s moving on to advanced levels of Spanish, attending classes in the school in the Argentine side of the Ándes, in Bariloche. But even though he´s moving to advanced classes, having completed 8 of 12 levels of study here, the guy can hardly speak Spanish. The problem is that he can´t think in Spanish. Everything is translated, and to hear him talk, you can tell, too, that he doesn´t comprehend Spanish sentence structure. To make the point, I´ll write in English with a Spanish sentence structure: "He no it comprehends the structure Spanish of sentences." Also, he speaks with a HEAVY southern U.S. accent, so it ends up being pretty amusing, at least for me. The Chileans are WAY too polite to laugh out loud, but my friend from Texas and I both got a good chuckle out of his graduation speech.

I realized last night that I simply need to change the groups with which I hang out. I´m going to stop spending time with the newly entered students and spend more time with the advanced students, or the staff. The staff here seems a bit more accessible, though it may simply reflect my comfort with Spanish as I´ve regained more of my ability to speak and comprehend. At any rate, several of the professors and other staff members have gotten onto me for saying that I don´t speak Spanish well. One has taken to saying, "Shut-up!" and "I won´t listen to that!" any and every time I am self deprecating about my Spanish speaking ability.

OK, time to go. This morning (Saturday) Daniel, Elena and I went to a HomeCenter (like Home Depot) way up in the higher part of the city, and this afternoon we go to the open air, public market to buy groceries for the coming week. What fun!

Muchas gracias, por todo!
-- Guille
(the name I´ve adopted in Spanish, pronounced GEE-zshae -- with a soft "g" as in "goat", NOT a hard "g" as in "Gerald")