A Remedy for Irregularity?

I sat beside Nicole of Panchito’s the other night as she did her Spanish homework at a corner table. She was all bundled up, her sweatshirt hood snugged tight around her ears. She had the sniffles and felt like she was coming down with a cold, which didn’t make doing homework any easier. In truth, she looked fairly unhappy.

“What are you studying?” I asked.

She pushed her workbook over to show me. I put on my glasses and groaned to discover that she was toiling over pronouns and irregular verbs. 

In my own Spanish class, which theoretically is a few levels more advanced than Nicole’s, we are toiling over pronouns and irregular verbs.

Some things just never end.

The next day, when she came to my house to pick up some grapefruit seed extract and hyper Vitamin C capsules, Nicole and I continued commiserating over our mutual state of consternation regarding the learning of this new language. “It’s all backwards,” she pointed out, accurately. “How am I ever going to remember ‘he for me it signed’?”

“Aaargh,” I replied helpfully.

And what about these verbs? How is it possible, I wondered, that the very most common verbs in Spanish are conjugated entirely differently from any other verb? How did this happen, and who was responsible? As my friend Connie always says in her inimitable Texas accent, they oughta be taken out behind the barn and shot. I suppose it was really just the evolution of the language, but whatever it was, it's a total pain for those of us trying to learn it.

When Nicole left, I grudgingly extracted a book from the bookcase, the exact same workbook she is using right now to do her study. I opened it. I discovered the page we’d been looking at the night before. There were the exact same exercises, all filled out. I looked carefully: yes, that’s definitely my handwriting. Rats. I was supposed to have learned that back then, wasn’t I? How is it that I have been out there hearing and speaking Spanish for years now and I still don’t really know this stuff?

I flipped a few pages to “Preterite Irregular Verbs”. Yup, I’d done those exercises, too: this page, this page, this page...oops. Suddenly the workbook pages are blank, bereft of anyone’s handwriting at all, especially mine.

Oh. Well, shoot. Maybe that explains it, huh?

I’ve had some conversations recently with Lidia regarding the English speakers here in the community and why some people learn Spanish and others don’t. She doesn’t understand it. Why would people who have chosen to live in Mexico not try to learn the language? “Son flojos o qué?” she asks. Are they lazy or what? (Lidia can be opinionated. That’s why I love her.)

I usually shrug. I don’t know what to say. I know there are a lot of excuses: too busy, too old, too embarrassed, the language too difficult. But I understand Lidia’s puzzlement. She sees it as a gesture of respect to the people and the culture when we extranjeros attempt to communicate in the local language. Lidia and most Mexicans I’ve met are patient, helpful, and encouraging when faced with Americans and Canadians who are at least trying to speak Spanish. Poco a poco, they say--little by little. And they are invariably complimentary and enthusiastic as we improve our vocabulary and skills.

For me, to choose not to speak Spanish is inconceivable, as I am a talker and I love good conversation above nearly all else. Not to attempt to improve my skills is equally inconceivable, as language is the bridge to friendship, to learning about individuals and their cultural context. My classmates at entreamigos agreed immediately that our quest to learn more and better Spanish was in order to be able to converse more profoundly, to discuss ideas and feelings that we could not reach with our previous knowledge. To connect. 

The blockades that arise (the placement of pronouns, the frigging irregular verbs, etc.) are part of the deal. No pain, no gain. True here as always. Yeah, it hurts to memorize. Just like it hurts to exercise. But I notice my brain getting stronger, my memory better, my recall quicker through this work. Best of all, I am beginning to have conversations that I couldn’t have had two years, a year, even a month ago.

That’s what I told Nicole, and also how we laugh in our Spanish class at the real fun there is in the learning, the new understanding of puns and wordplay, the appreciation that we’re all in it together, shaking our heads at what we don’t know and applauding each other’s little victories.

It’s worth it. 

So I’m going to open that blasted book and finish those exercises I abandoned during construction or whenever, and get back to work memorizing those miserable verbs, which of course are the very ones I need every day in nearly every conversation. Rats. 

Wish me luck.

 

 

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Comments

[Travis]

For us it we learn! (umm.....errr...¡Nos lo aprendemos!) Learning Spanish is easy, really. It's the remembering part that kicks my ass. ¡Suerte!

[Char]

Well, I'm proud of you Girl! And if anyone can master it, you can!

[Gretchen Goodliffe]

at least the letters are pretty well the same in Ingles and Espanol..... can you imagine learning Greek!!!!
Buena suerte…
¡Soy lejano lejos detrás de usted!!!