Language week Thursday - Spanish 2

Ayer no tuve mucho tiempo para blog, entonces, yo pruebo español una vez más.

Yesterday I didn´t have much time to blog, so I try Spanish again.

Pero no tengo mucho tiempo esta noche tampoco. Fue a la piscina con mi colega de trabajo (de la oficina de Francia) después la oficina, y entonces fuimos a cenar. Siempre es interesante, con esta persona de Francia, pq hablamos de las noticias y culturas. Por ejemplo, ahora en las noticias en Francia, ella ha oido algo que Hilary dijo a Obama, que las periodistas de Francia piensan es importante...pero ella quiere saber...es algo importante en America o una cuenta de las periodistas franceses?

But I don´t have much time today either. I went to the pool with my work colleague (from the French office) after work, and then we went to dinner. Always it is interesting, with this person from France, because we talk about the news and cultures. For example, now in the French news, she had heard that Hilary said something to Obama, that the French journalists think is important...but she wanted to know...is it something important in America or a story from the French journalists?

Y le pregunté, ¿es las noticias sobre Angelina en Nice importante a la gente en Francia? Sí, es muy interesante a la Fraceses que una persona famosa como Angelina con mucho dinero, ella puede escoger cualquier lugar en el mundo para el nacimiento, y ella escoja Francia.

And I asked, is the news about Angelina in Nice important to the people in France? Yes, it´s interesting to the French, that a famous person with a lot of money, she can choose anywhere in the world to give birth, and she chooses France.

Tal vez necesito vivir en Francia después Alemania. O sea, apprender la lengua Francés sería un principio interestante...entonces no necisito para repetir en language week. :-)

Perhaps I need to live in France after Germany. Or maybe to learn French would be an interesting start...then I don´t need to "repeat" in language week. :-)

The hidden subconscious - more on language acquisition

I am coming to the conclusion that language acquisition is mainly mindset and exposure rather than talent driven. If I was dating a German and imagining a long-term future here, I'd probably actually make an effort. As it is I go to class each week for 1.5 hours because company J. is paying for it, it's private lessons from Berlitz with only me in the class, and it's during work hours. I spend around an hour each week on homework, mainly because I rather like the teacher and would feel bad by attempting nothing.

A few weeks back, I was talking to my Spanish colleague, whom I rarely get to speak to these days. My Spanish is quite comfortable, I have facilitated meetings in Spanish where I am the only non-native speaker, I've done meetings where the other speakers know almost no English, and I am able to read and discuss in Spanish high level topics like religion and philosophy. My exposure to Spanish these days is limited to a handful of work colleagues with whom I interact occasionally and 30 min per week in the car when I catch a Spanish news broadcast on Monday nights after Polish class. When I speak and read it, however, it's pretty well cemented. There is no longer 'lead time' while I get back into the feel of speaking it and I can read a newspaper pre-coffee without thinking.

Imagine my absolute surprise, then, when I am speaking to my Spanish colleague and some German words sneak right into the sentence. It was like they were slipping over the Polish border under the cover of night. The construct of the sentence was Spanish as were the bulk of the words, but 'wie immer' slipped right in, in place of the Spanish equivalent. As it is I don't really like the sounds of German in general and the best you'll get out of me on a good day is that I will listen to your German spiel and then respond in English to you if you are someone in my office. If I'm in tiny town of B I will move around completely in German on Saturdays, although it's often of a Turkish flavor over here.

Then over a weekend I was at a vegetarian restaurant in Koeln and picked up a soya hot chocolate on the way out. I was in line behind some people so it was taking a few minutes. While I was waiting, I could hear the coffeebar woman talking with a customer sitting at the counter and they were talking in Spain Spanish. I started off my order in German as that is what I am used to doing here, but midway it converted to Spanish automatically, I think because I was listening to the ladies.

The woman pauses for half a second, somehow understanding my half-baked sentence and then responds to me in Spanish. I carry on a conversation for some minutes with the customer in Spanish. But again, every once and a while a German word started to creep in, perhaps because I had spent some hours the previous night mainly around German speakers, and also speaking German.

My inability to control such slippages mainly tells me that the influence of living here is quite heavy.

while it was snowing in Germany

While my expat blogger colleagues have been writing about the winter weather, I've been in the sun in Barcelona. En route to Barcelona, I had to switch planes in Palma de Mallorca. As the second plane was 3 hours late in coming from Stuttgart, I had plenty of time to wander around the airport.

So some photos from the Mallorca aipoirt. I took this photo to show the water fountain. While water fountains are all over US airports and many European airports, they are non-existent in the German aiports I travel through (primarily Cologne and D'dorf).

Then a random photo inside the airport because they kept moving the gate during the three hours of delay. So we were supposed to be at gate 91, and they said a 30 minute delay. Then that posting went away as they took over the gate for a different flight. On the TV monitors it said gate 85, but upon going there, there was nothing on the directional sign, so I followed the herd down to the Air Berlin info desk, where they said to go to gate 81. But the TV says 86. It does? One of the Air Berlin workers goes to look, and now it's saying 80. So we traipse down to 80.Finally, after spending two hours gate chasing, we seemed to settle at one gate. Unfortunately, that's when they pushed it back an entire hour. In good news, they sent us to the snack bar where they gave us sandwichs and soda. Where the man is standing is the counter where they gave out the sandwiches. It was very high tech, they looked at your boarding pass and then ripped off a tiny bit of the corner upon giving you a sandwich, I guess to keep you from going for two. OK, it was nice and all for them to feed us, but I wouldn't have wanted two.Finally we took off after three hours. Here is a view of Mallorca from the air. Pretty, no?The work meetings were OK, I met a lot of people whom I have not encountered previously. My long weekend then began at 16.40 on Thursday when arrived back at the airport, catching a ride with some colleagues from some remote site that was an hour away.

I took the bus from the airport into town. It is only 3.75 euros and comes around every 10 minutes, sometimes more or less depending on when in the day you go. I took it to Placa de Catalunya which is a big square. From there I walked to my hotel, which is around 25 minutes by foot. I usually stay at the same hotel because Barcelona is so big and I know where this hotel is, as well as it is a reasonable option price-wise. On Friday I was out and about in the neighborhood, here are some photos:
Finally, I made it to the shoe Mecca, the Camper shoe outlet, or "Re-Camper" as they call it. I bought only one pair of shoes, I'll get a photo of them for a future blog. While I was at the outlet complex, they were photographing an advert. So part of the walkway was roped off and in the center in the bright lights were models on motorcycles. The advert-->it must have been for a cookie because the leather-clad models were posing holding the cookie, about to bite into the cookie.
Later, back in town on Friday evening I took it easy with a coffee at a local cafe. On Saturday it was more of the same, just lazing around the neighborhood, basically. At one point I wandering into a market. It had many stands with fresh meats, cheeses, fish, vegetables, and fruits. I stopped for an espresso and watched the shoppers. Life in Spain moves slow.Later, I went to a neighborhood cafe near the hotel. My Spanish is good enough to please the kind Spanish people, especially as the places I was going were not tourist heavy. At the cafe I ordered a glass of wine and a slice of tortilla. The woman then offered me, 'bread with tomato'. Um, I understand the Spanish words, but not the point. 'Ah carina, I explain.' In Catalunya (the region of Spain that includes Barcelona as its capital, and where they also speak Catalan in addition to Spanish), it is customary to eat bread with tomato as a starter or as a snack. It's bread from a baguette which is smeared with a tomato, so it's a little wet and then it's dabbed with olive oil. You don't actually really get tomato on the bread when you eat it, only the juice and maybe a few of the seeds from the tomato. And she was so sweet, she did not charge me anything for it, although later when I saw some cafe menus I saw it on there for a small amount, 1 euro or under.

Then, I went to a bar where I had previously gone with my travel partner in crime, JF. She and I stopped in this hole in the wall where they serve fabulous wine for 1 euro a glass, in heavy glass jars. We had extremely low expectations and ended up staying there for hours because the wine was so good and the atmosphere was comfortable and relaxed.

This time I was alone, so I got a glass of wine and watched the activities. There were perhaps 8 people around the bar, one of them had a guitar out and was playing. The two bar staff were putting away the tapas. In the background, on TV were the 3 tenors, and a little girl in the bar was enchanted by them. As they started to shut off lights and give signs that the bar was closing (a little surprising at 21.30 for Spain), two older gentlemen, looking at least 70, who had come in for a glass of red wine went to pay and said 'and we invite the chica', so they were paying for me. I said no, it's ok, and they said, no, we do. As I did not want to disrespect their hospitality I let them. So very sweet.

Since it was only 21.30 I stopped at a third cafe. It was open later and some people were there having long dinners, others were having tapas with a bottle of win, others were popping in just for a coffee or a beer at the bar. It was slow as it got a little later in the evening and I was chatting with the bartender so I asked if I could get a photo of the bar, if that was ok. Of course it was ok and then he offered to take a photo of me in the bar, recognizing that I was a goofy tourist. I give you just the photo I took.The next morning (Saturday), I had most of the day as the flight did not leave until 18.00. First stop was to a sidewalk cafe for some fresh squeezed orange juice. The weather was 10 C with blazing sunshine. I sat there for a while watching many people walking all varieties of dogs.
Then I did some final wandering around. Here is one of the bull-fighting rings that is still in use. It is tough to see in this photo, but a motif prevalent in the blue design is the Star of David.

Then, I went to the supermarket to pick up wine and oreos and to the cafe for a coffee. I picked up a salad and fresh tomatos and enjoyed it on a park bench. I went back to the indoor market to buy some fine looking olives. I also bought a slice of tortilla to take with me to eat at the airport later. In speaking with the woman she was asking where I was from, etc. and what did I think of people from Spain? She then also packed with 'as a little gift' one of her home-made empanadillas for me. It was about the size of a pirogi, a deep-fried wonder. Once again, the people of Spain, so very nice.

The *rain* in *Spain* stays *mainly* in the *plain*

I am off to Spain for a few days late next week, to work one day and then with one day being my first vacation day of the year, as well as a Saturday to run around and shop. This time, it's to Barcelona, which will be my third time there.

In the great behemoth of a company that I work for we have offices around the world. For the most part, the offices where I get to go are the ugly step-sister of offices that are located in industrial parks, on the outskirts of fine metropolises such as: Zwickau, Wuppertal, Geel, Valencia, Wednesbury, Telford, and one podunk one two hours away from Prague--do you get the idea? Offices that are located where land, buildings, and labor is cheap since the primary purpose of the site is/was manufacturing and now we have an office there too. (In your dreams of becoming an expat in Europe, I doubt the above appears, Gentle Reader.)

Rarely do I get to go to the sexy Cinderella offices like London, Paris, or Barcelona as these tend to be tiny satellite offices that are used mainly for sales and for only a small part of the client facing part of the business since real estate in the big cities is expensive.

However, someone managed to set up a meeting in Barcelona because we must talk about their systems there, in that Barcelona office. Shot, score!

-->Four glorious days in a country where the majority of the people are not permanently frowning.

-->Four days of being able to function linguistically as a 31 year old, rather than a 7 year old.

-->Four days of seeing people actually wearing clothing with color, beyond orange, brown and black.

-->One day in an office where business casual is something other than cargo pants or blue jeans.

-->Three days of sweet, gentle white wine and a few more bottles to carry home.

This year is off to a good start!

On accents and language acquisition

In December as I was happily packing my bags, the topic of accents and how one speaks was weaving and winding merrily through various expat blogs. It was part of a meme that involved one speaking and commenting on one's own accent and speaking online for the blog world. There were many lovely voices from all corners of the English and non-English speaking world and all flavors of accents.

Alas, I did not find a Philadelphia blogger posting to listen to the melodic sounds, nor did I feel obligated to contribute my own for a few reasons. First, I recognize that I've lost (or misplaced) a good deal of my Philly sound. I was hoping I'd find it again over the ten days when I was there recently. However, it seems that it is carefully packed away in tissue paper in a box safe in the back of a drawer somewhere there, only to be take out on special occasions.

I grew up with a pleasant Philly sound, as we all did there. Growing up, my mother's side of the family had arrived in the area from West Virginia in 1965-1968. I represent the new beginning, I was the first one born 'up north'. However, being so heavily surrounded by the gentle Appalachian sound I can easily slide into it myself. Growing up I never noticeably picked up the difference of it except on occasional words.

In 1997 I left the area and went to grad school in Washington DC. After that I went and worked in Atlanta for 8 months. Then I went to California for four years, until coming to the UK in early 2003 for five months, and then I've been in Germany since 2003. I've always thought that if you spend much of your early years or teenage years in a location, you will speak primarily with that sound. If you spend 21 years of your life somewhere you cannot drop it like you were never there.

However, some recent interesting pieces:
After a sardine experience with hundreds of other Americans squashing through inadequate security at Paris to connect to my flight to Philly I started to talking to someone in line. Nice enough guy, late 40's, former military stationed in Germany, but now in Switzerland also going home. The usual "standing in line but in a good mood because we're going home small talk" and he says "going to Philly but you're not from there..." Um, no, really. Then he says "oh really, you don't sound like it." Yeah, I know.

Then, over the holidays a cousin had assembled some home videos of years past. One of them includes myself on a bit of a diatribe of teenage drivel around age 15. Holy crap, I never could have imagined the pure Philly sounds coming out of my mouth. I'm not even sure I could shift into such sounds now even if I really tried.

In researching these thoughts further, I came across an interview in USA Weekend (February 20-22, 1998), the folks who make USA Today. It is an interview with Kim Delaney, one of Philly's finest homegrown actresses, here:
It says: To lose a Philly accent: "You have to open your mouth and pronounce every syllable," says this Philadelphia native, who finessed her speech by reading newspapers aloud. "The bottom lip doesn't move as much in a Philly accent."

Well isn't that just interesting? Often in Germany, when someone is making an attempt to speak English, I am careful to speak carefully in order to honor their attempt. We tend to drop letters off of the end of words in Philly-speak, or to speak low and fast. Here in Germany I speak a little more slowly than I would at home and am careful to sanitize my words so that they arrive clearly and as expected. I speak with Americans perhaps one hour total once per week on average. The rest of my 'speaking' time here is with Europeans. The only English I am exposed to is British or Irish.

Which leads me to further thoughts. Often, people have an expectation that learning another language as an adult is too difficult, or Germans says that 'learning German is difficult for English speakers.' To that I say 'blah'. Based on my constant exposure to Germans and how words spill forth, I think it would be harder NOT to learn German based on how so much of it has just slipped into my mind through constant exposure to it.

A few weeks back one of my colleagues from Spain was here. It was refreshing to me as I can move about in Spanish with very little effort. Since I majored in Spanish literature at the university level I acquired a high facility with the language. However, Spanish (of mainly a Puerto Rican or Dominican variety) permeates the Philly area so it wasn't as impressive as if I have gained a high level of a non-local language, such as French or Swedish. All of which further reinforces to me that it is not formal schooling but rather the amount of language exposure that molds your acquisition.