Spanish Classes in the Barrio

About a year ago, John started taking Spanish classes with a group of about 20 expats. They met once a week and their instructor, a local Tica, who is a native Spanish speaker. Wouldn't you know it, this past February, just as everyone was getting in the grove, their teacher up and quits because she accepted a job out of town.

We were at FUF one afternoon, enjoying a beer, and several of John's classmates and friends were bemoaning the loss of their teacher. Everyone was disappointed and they weren't sure what to do to continue taking lessons. Before I knew it, I opened my mouth and volunteered to step up to try to fill their learning gap.

Mind you, I am NOT a teacher, I never studied Spanish, but I am pretty fluent, with a strong grasp of the language. I picked up my Spanish back in my 20's via the school of hard knocks. Consequently, my Spanish is full of colloquialisms, or "dichos," as we say in Costa Rica.

In March, I started teaching Spanish to a small group of 6 students in our Rancho, on Tuesday afternoons. The group has now grown to 12 students, and I've limited the class size due to table & chair space, and the size of my PC's monitor. The class is informal and everyone brings their beverage of choice, and sometimes snacks to share.

I'm spending several hours a week preparing lessons and finding new material to teach. The stuff available online is amazing. I've found some terrific websites, some with downloadable PowerPoint presentations, and games to help reinforce the lessons.

Folks appear to be learning and the feedback has been good. No matter how hard I try to keep it interesting, not everyone is into homework. My goal is not to get them to speak perfect Spanish. I just want them to understand what they hear and be able to participate in the conversation. Half the battle at our age is just not being afraid to speak. It doesn't matter if it's wrong. It's the effort that counts.

We have a 22" PC monitor that hadn't been used in the 5 years we've been here. We figured out how to use a number of connectors to attach the monitor's 9-pin VGA port to the HDMI port on my laptop. It works pretty well, but it's still hard for everyone to see from a distance. We've talked about getting a true video projector, but they are so expensive. Anything decent will run a least $400-$500.

Several folks have heard about my class and have asked to join, but there just isn't any room. I've started a waiting list for a second class and we'll see if there is enough interest in the community to make it worth my time.

On Wednesdays, when I'm not teaching Spanish, I switch gears and help a local doctor with her English pronunciation. Wow, is that an eye opener. I never realized how many English sounds simply do not exist in a native Spanish speaker's diction. Trying to explain how to use the muscles of the tongue to produce English sounds has been an interesting challenge.

I kid you not, being retired is hard work and we are busy all the time. I use my appointment calendar more now than I ever did in my working career, and maybe part of that is because my memory isn't what it used to be.

¡Pura vida, mae!
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Español and things that irk me...

The native language in Costa Rica is Spanish, or español. It is one of several of the romance languages and it's alphabet, unlike English, officially contains 27 letters: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, ñ, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, and z.

When I learned to speak, read and write Spanish, some 40+ years ago, the alphabet consisted of 30 "letters", 3 of which were letter combinations that have since been eliminated by the Real Academia Española (the ultimate authority on the Spanish language. The other 3 letters where ch, ll and rr.

Spanish was not easy to learn, but certainly it is much easier to master in your 20's than in your 60's. Now that I have turned into "that crabby old lady" (John's words, not mine) I get irked when people try to write in Spanish without taking the time to spell the words correctly. I see it all the time in the online forums and blogs of English speakers. Most of these folks depend on a spell checker to make sure their English is spelled correctly, but they don't bother to ensure their Spanish is spelled correctly.

At times, these misspellings can be rather comical, but occasionally they can be down right insulting. One of the biggest mistakes I see people making is spelling words with the letter ñ, or Ñ. Yes, this is a unique letter, not the letter N with an accent mark. The letter N is pronounced "ene" and the letter Ñ is pronounced "enyea".

I'm sure you've all heard the Christmas song by José Feliciano, that goes like this...

Feliz Navidad

Feliz Navidad

Feliz Navidad

Prospero Año y Felicidad.

Well, the word Año is one of my major pet peeves.... it is spelled "año" not "ano" and it is the difference between wishing someone a prosperous year, or a prosperous "asshole", or "anus" if you want to be anatomically correct.

Here are a couple of other examples the irk me...

cumpleaños (birthday)
Cumple, comes from the verb "cumplir", or to comply, so you can probably guess what it would mean if written as "cumple anos"

sueño (dream/ or sleepy.."tengo sueño")
But when written as "sueno" it means sounded, as in the past tense of the verb "sonar", or to sound.

Doña (title of respect as in lady, mistress or madam)
The word written as "dona" comes from the verb "donar", or donate. It is also a misspelling of the English word "donut". So if this is placed in front of a woman's name, it could mean "Donate Patricia", or maybe even Patricia Donut.

uña (nail---as in finger nail)
If written as "una" it means one, or the article an.

cañón (canyon)
When written as "canon" it means canon, dogma, or doctrine.

We have a local restaurant in Atenas called "Antaños", or "Yesteryears" in English. After this brief lesson, I'll bet you can noodle out the definition if it were written as "Antanos". I can't begin to count the number of times I've heard expats mispronounce this word. They probably get tired of me trying to correct them, but they need to suck it up. I'm just trying to help and pay it forward.

When I was learning Spanish, my best friend Maritza, a Tica, spent more time correcting me than she did talking to me. Here it is, some 40+ years later, and she still giggles when I mispronounce something in her native language. My Spanish will never be perfect, and everyday I learn something new. She continues to teach me and I continue to improve.

If you are learning español, you need to bookmark the Real Academia Española as your "go to" site when you need to know the correct spelling of a Spanish word. There is no better source. Another excellent resource is the Spanish Language Lab at Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne

I'll get off my soapbox for now, but only until this old curmudgeon finds something else worth sharing.

Hasta luego señores...
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