Practicing My English
One of the reasons I came to Peru was to improve my Spanish. Although I had a fairly good classroom foundation, it was nonetheless classroom Spanish, and when I arrived I had some difficulty doing things like navigating airport security, buying a cell phone, and dealing with the bank. Modern daily life isn't exactly something addressed in Cervantes or Becquer.
My Spanish has gotten much better since I arrived six weeks ago. I chitchat with taxi drivers about the weather and the price of fruit, and I tease the boys in my music class at the center, and I even manage to have conversations at nightclubs where I can only halfway hear what people are saying. Not gonna lie, I'm rather proud of myself and how much I've improved. Sure, I still have trouble with the subjunctive sometimes and phrases like "la mano izquierda" still trip me up sometimes because it feels like mano should be masculine, but overall, I'm much improved.
However, there's a slight problem here in Cusco. As much as I want to practice my Spanish, all the Cusqueñans want to practice their English just as much. Due to my accent and my occasional grammatical mistakes, it's quite clear that I'm not a Peruvian, and as soon as they find out I'm from the U.S., they all switch into English. One vendor at the artisan's market even asked me to help him with his English class homework in exchange for a discount.
This isn't exactly limited to Peruvians either. I've met Chileans with better English than my own, Argentinians who love American hip-hop, and untold numbers of kids my age from all over Latin America who've studied in the U.S. and know all my favorite spots in L.A. What's a gal to do in this environment, anyway?
I've come up with a rather useful solution to this, inspired by my friends whose parents don't speak English or prefer to speak another language. It's a common phenomenon in the U.S. that immigrant parents will speak to their children in their native language, and their children will answer in English. I've decided to flip-flop this situation. The Cusqueñans can speak to me in English all they want, but unless I'm helping them with an English grammatical question or something like that, I answer them in Spanish. Neither of us are speaking our native language this way, but it's a good way for both to practice the language we want to practice.
Next up: getting the boys at the Centro Juvenil to stop trying to practice their Italian with me.
My Spanish has gotten much better since I arrived six weeks ago. I chitchat with taxi drivers about the weather and the price of fruit, and I tease the boys in my music class at the center, and I even manage to have conversations at nightclubs where I can only halfway hear what people are saying. Not gonna lie, I'm rather proud of myself and how much I've improved. Sure, I still have trouble with the subjunctive sometimes and phrases like "la mano izquierda" still trip me up sometimes because it feels like mano should be masculine, but overall, I'm much improved.
However, there's a slight problem here in Cusco. As much as I want to practice my Spanish, all the Cusqueñans want to practice their English just as much. Due to my accent and my occasional grammatical mistakes, it's quite clear that I'm not a Peruvian, and as soon as they find out I'm from the U.S., they all switch into English. One vendor at the artisan's market even asked me to help him with his English class homework in exchange for a discount.
This isn't exactly limited to Peruvians either. I've met Chileans with better English than my own, Argentinians who love American hip-hop, and untold numbers of kids my age from all over Latin America who've studied in the U.S. and know all my favorite spots in L.A. What's a gal to do in this environment, anyway?
I've come up with a rather useful solution to this, inspired by my friends whose parents don't speak English or prefer to speak another language. It's a common phenomenon in the U.S. that immigrant parents will speak to their children in their native language, and their children will answer in English. I've decided to flip-flop this situation. The Cusqueñans can speak to me in English all they want, but unless I'm helping them with an English grammatical question or something like that, I answer them in Spanish. Neither of us are speaking our native language this way, but it's a good way for both to practice the language we want to practice.
Next up: getting the boys at the Centro Juvenil to stop trying to practice their Italian with me.
posted by Lauren at 12:19 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home