It’s hard to believe that I’ve been living in Colombia for almost a year! I arrived on March 11, 2018. I’ve had a work contract and visa for the year so I’ll be departing Colombia at the end of March. As my time here draws nearer to a close, I think it’s time for another entry to make you laugh about some of the language differences I’ve experienced. Improving and using my Spanish was one of the top reasons I had for moving here, and I feel pretty good about where I’m at, almost a year later. I have a long way to go to speak “fluently”, but I feel more and more confident in my skills with every passing week. It hasn’t come without a lot of work, and a lot of mistakes. But this entry is less about my mistakes and more about some humorous observations.
I’ve been collecting stories right and left, simply from living in a country that is not my own and regularly trying to adapt and navigate my own expectations and the circumstances that surround me. This is a great recipe for funny stories, and I’ll attest that a really good sense of humor is pretty much necessary if you’re going to travel or live somewhere outside many of your comfort zones.
Throughout this past year, my growing familiarity with the Spanish language has shown me that many words do not have a direct translation and many times it’s more of a feeling you have to grow into in order to say what you really want to say, instead of mechanically putting translated words together. For me, really understanding (and accepting) this is coming after a lot of time and exposure. But for humor’s sake, sometimes direct translation are pretty fun.
An example, which starts with a not-so-funny story but one that turned out alright (and some lessons learned), was that my wallet was stolen back in November as I was leaving a crowded dance club. As I was making the report of theft online (known to be fruitless for actually getting your things back but necessary for being able to order a new national ID– one of the many of what I refer to as “Colombian paradoxes”)– I had Google translate the page so I wouldn’t miss any important information. However, I have found that often when I use the page translator, things don’t come out quite right.
When I accessed the drop-down menu, the first item on the list was “Meat”. Ummm, who loses MEAT? Or who reports stolen meat? What the heck is this list?
Then the page abruptly shut down. Of course. At the time I was kind of at the end of my patience because of the theft itself and all the crap I had to do to deal with for what I’d lost. But later when I tried this process again, I didn’t choose Google Translate as I felt having gone through the form in English earlier had familiarized me with it enough. Therefore I got to see the lost-list in its original form and…what? Where was the Meat? (I was sort of thinking I’d select it just to see what would happen and if the office of Migration would still grant me a new ID card when I said all I had lost was some hamburger). Come to find out, “carné” with an accent on the e (é) is a completely different word than the one without the accent. Carne =meat. Carné = identification card. Who knew?? Well, Colombians know, obviously. But the page translator didn’t know the different between a letter with an accent over the top and one without. (PS, for you language nerds like me, the accent is actually called a tilde. Without a tilde the word is pronounced differently and it has a completely different meaning).
I’ve talked to many people here who have their own stories about the hardships of language learning, big and small misunderstandings, and humorous or embarrassing stories, but the tie that binds us together is the fact that we’re all trying so hard to use what context we have in our lives to learn and use new sounds to make sense of a foreign world and to make ourselves understood to those who live in that world. Context is key, and is why it’s so hard when you’re first learning a language. When you’re first learning anything new you can only proceed by fitting it into what you already know.
As you might already know, the work I’ve been doing here is teaching English to business professionals. More than a couple years ago, when I began this journey of preparing to move to somewhere in South America, getting my teaching certificate was mostly a means to an end. I knew I’d have to work when I lived abroad (and I wanted to), and there would not be many options for me because my former position wouldn’t transfer over, and because my Spanish wasn’t good enough. Through the journey of obtaining my certification and beginning teaching, I have truly come to love it. It’s a completely people-oriented profession requiring patience and compassion, lots of creativity, and also a sense of humor.
I have to share a few things that make me giggle and simply warm my heart. I appreciate my students’ efforts and am inspired by how motivated they are to improve their English just as on the flip side I’m working my tail off to improve my Spanish. As I said, my students are professionals, involved in many interesting things, and many have families. They’ve been raised in a very hospitable culture so each one comes to me with an open heart wanting to offer everything from coffee during our lessons to invitations to join them or their families to do things. I respect and admire them all.
I’ve come to see some patterns in the mistakes that native Spanish speakers make who are learning English. Many times they are truly endearing, and it gives me encouragement to think that maybe I, too, sound a little cute when I make some of the mistakes I’ve made!
Here the respectful term “Profesor” or, for short, “Profe” which delights me to no end for some reason, is something I get called a lot instead of my first name. I think it reminds me of being in elementary school; a have this vision of a kid tugging on the Teacher’s pants and wanting them to give attention to their work or art project… “Teacher, look at this!” 🙂
Another time I laughed out loud but completely got what the student was trying to do, which was to use words he knew but the order and context weren’t quite right.. I don’t think he actually feels sorry for me (I hope not, how embarrassing!)
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In one of my posts last year, I mentioned that as I’m walking around this huge city I constantly see t-shirts with funny sayings… and I don’t mean funny-haha so much as funny…weird. Like, “that’s funny (insert eyebrow raise), what exactly does that mean”? Or, does that person know what it means? To me, they are odd saying or words to be printed on t-shirts. What companies are making these graphic-t designs with words that are not put together quite right?
I began making a list on my phone, keeping track of the shirts I saw that made me laugh, raise an eyebrow, or really seemed out of context. After a year, I have a huge list! I don’t know what to do with all of them, I guess it’s been for my own quirky pleasure to keep track. Or when I write a book someday, it’s going to have a chapter just about strange t-shirt sayings found in Colombia.
Check out this sampling, be assured that none of them are typos:
-I’m not a Blogger
-Wake up and live
-Yes But Not With You
-What?….Yep.
-Buttocks (in cursive)
-Nothing
-A Unicorn Ate My Homework
-Laugh And Grow Fat
-Idol Half Part Time
-Always
-NEVER
-Umm…..Yep.
-A Girl Has No Name
-Hello…Oops.
-Born To Ride Unicorns
-Hot Biscuits (on a kid’s sweatshirt)
-Cheerleading is Officially a Sport
-Lost in a Jungle of Accents
-Stay Magical
-Eat Carrot it’s Vegan
-I Love my Cat is My Life Together Forever
-Brunch All Day
-Everyone looks better online, Put Filters in your Life
-You Make Me Wonder
-Squat Squat Squat
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Hope you enjoyed the randomness of this post, and that the quirks of translating and navigating another culture including it’s t-shirt language makes you smile because it’s almost allllll about context!
PS, I recently found an extensive series of YouTube videos by a guy who calls himself The Spanish Dude. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying them as I also learn a lot. Here are a couple of my favorites, which discuss the fact that we can’t directly translate a lot of words and phrases, and some that we think we can turn out pretty funny:
“How Words Work” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acRcqCwpvEM
“False Friends in Spanish” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiFmVVUJtb4
