Toady I wandered into our local coffeeshop for the first time. Serona is home from Mexico and gave me a much needed break. I took my crocheting and went to have a coffee and treat. It was a nice break.
It was also interesting to see the people come in and out. For the first time I truly wished I could speak Spanish. A young couple came in and the woman was watching me work on my blanket and I could tell she wanted to talk to me about it but she spoke Spanish and I spoke English - instead we made eye contact and smiled and she watched for awhile until they left. I wish I could have engaged her - the first time I think I truly regret not having the language. Especially on the heels of Serona's return from Mexico and his talk about trying hard to speak as much as possible in Spanish while he was there.
I enjoyed seeing my neighborhood come in and out and I think I will have to do it more often and strike up some conversations. If you have a local coffeeshop you haven't been to it might be worth the trip.
Peace,
Tenn
August 7, 2004
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It's never too late to learn! ;-)
ReplyDeleteWe spent an incredible day on the beach with several families from El Salvador. My Spanish was as rusty as their English, but we patchworked some form of communication that was heavily dependent upon cognates and pantomime. Had a wonderful time. The children all played together quite well- they didn't seem to even notice a language barrier.
I am really thankful for my friends here in Ukraine who speak English. I can communicate fine in Russian now on a marketing, chatting, family talk level--but anything deeper requires a Russian/English mix.
ReplyDeleteSeeing how much children and university students study languages here (French, German, Arabic, Spaniah--as well as English), makes me think that kids in the US really are being short-shrifted. And I see that across the board--in public, private, and home schools. Of course there are exceptions, but I would love to see a higher value placed on language learning in the US.
Btw, that was me. *grin*
ReplyDeleteTulipGirl
It's amazing how easily kids can overcome language barriers, that sounds like a beautiful moment on the beach.
ReplyDeleteAs for language training in the US - I agree we have far too little of it. I can remember jsut doing the minimum to get by in high school and then in college I opted for a different degree than I originally planned so I could avoid taking a foreign language.
With the mixing of so many cultures in our modern world it seems we need to place more emphasis on this.
Learning another language is just so much more difficult, I think, after a certain age. I've been trying to learn Spanish for as long as I've been married (by taking advantage of my Spanish speaking husband). After all this time, I can curse pretty well, ask for kisses and hugs, tell my kids to come here, and get about half of most sentences. With that I can generally only get in trouble!
ReplyDelete