Would it be too much to ask if you know where this intersection is?
Imagine being a rather tired old man from a different part of the city. You need to find a particular street corner to deliver a basket of goods in the economic sense to a friend of a friend as a favor. You approach a rather smug and somewhat foreign looking guy standing close to the maps at the bus station. You ask him if he knows where that particular street corner is, and he pauses for a second, and then pulls out a few coins and tries to hand them to you. You stare at him confusedly and repeat the question. Flustered, he replies that he does not know. Then you realize that he is just some chino.
Sometimes, I feel like I will never understand Spanish.
An American-Indian girl asked me today if she could have me email and password combination for the U Católica network so that her sister, who is visiting from out of the country, could have something to do while she attends class. This surprised me, especially considering that it was perhaps the 30th sentence we exchanged (outside of a few emails asking whether or not the other person was going to take the Salazar class), and obviously, I gave it to her. This of course annoys me. Why: 1. She started off the sentence "Would it be too much to ask if..." Now if you start off a sentence like that, you already know that it is too much to ask if. 2. I don't even really know her. 3. She is not that attractive, and so I would have no real reason outside of being a nice guy (or a wimp who doesn't want to deal with the social awkwardness of refusing a request) to give her my email and password. Yes, I am that shallow.
Fact: Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister of Canada. The capital of Canada is Ottowa. I found the first fact after reading a BBC Spanish article about how Americans don't know who the president of Mexico or the president of Brasil are. (I find this type of article quite stupid. Ask the random Brasilian or Mexican if they know who the president of Russia is or the president of Argentina.)
EDIT: And by American-Indian, I mean Indian-American. This girl was so light, I thought she was...well I didn't know what I thought she was (sort of mediterranean european?), but I was quite surprised when I heard Indian.
Labels: chile, complaints, musings
August 14, 2007 at 12:46 AM
Jon - You sell your Spanish abilities way too short. Sure, you might not speak so fluently as a native and you might not understand the street lingo ramblings of an old man; but I can tell you that your Spanish skills now as opposed to just one year ago are tremendously improved. Exponentially improved.
Heck, even I have moments where I lament my own Spanish skills, when, if truth be told, I have no business doing so, even if I find myself not understanding a single rambling of Spanish that I just heard.
Be easy on yourself and just go with the flow. Take it as it comes and be content that you understand Spanish more often than you don't. top
August 14, 2007 at 9:30 AM
This comment has been removed by the author. top
August 14, 2007 at 12:00 PM
by american indian do you mean native american? because if you do, then she deserves your email address and password seeing as how her people were raped and pillaged so that you could enjoy the luxury of studying abroad from the ivory tower of security that is the American Empire.
hell, you should to give it up to her if she asks. fat girls need loving too.
also, an american knowing the PM of canada would be more like a mexican/brazilian knowing the leader of guatemala/venezuela. plus, you cant compare apples and oranges--the average american citizen and the average south american citizen are very different. considering the US is THE leading superpower less-powerful counties feel that it should be shameful that so many US citizens are so ignorant its not because citizens of superpowers tend to be insular (take ancient china in its heyday for example).
anyway, they're just jealous of american might. top
August 14, 2007 at 1:56 PM
der jasager: she is indian american I suppose. My bad. How did you know that she was fat?
i suppose it is a shame that americans dont know anything about the countries their country is meddling with. But I think that people everywhere are generally ignorant of most things, especially things that don't really cross their paths on a day to day basis. I know it gets their goat that americans don't know much about anything, but at the end of the day, what does that article say? what conclusions can you draw? I am sure the NYT could just as easily write some article demonstrating the general ignorance of a population without really making a point about anything. So in the end, I guess I feel that the article is just sort of spiteful. top