You Take My Pronouns, I Take Your Toys

11 April 2014

For the entire trip, Kat and I have been experiencing the “two steps forward, one step back” reality of language learning. Every week there are days when we feel confident and optimistic about our progress in Spanish, and other days when our brains just can’t keep up. We both had moments this week that were closer to “two steps forward, five steps back.”

 First, some geeky grammar stuff in case it's new to you. In Spanish, subject pronouns are not necessary because they are implied by how you conjugate the verb. For example, “Yo juego fútbol” (I play soccer) usually becomes “Juego fútbol.” In English, if the subject and verb don’t agree, the pronoun always wins. “I plays the soccer” sounds wrong (in a hip and quirky way), but you still know who is doing that verb. In Spanish, the pronoun safety net is often gone, and if you conjugate the verb wrong, the whole sentence changes. <end grammar geekout>

Yesterday a kid next to me was crying during playtime, and another tia (all the teachers are called “auntie”) asked me what happened. I told her, “I don’t want to share.” Then I realized what I said and “corrected” myself: “You don’t want to share.” Sigh. This is really basic stuff that I knew years ago, but apparently whatever I learned this week displaced the old stuff.

But wait, it gets better. Today one of our toddlers had a pants-filling situation during English class, and Kat took her back to her classroom. The girl’s tia asked what happened, and Kat told her: “I pooped.”

Back when we spoke English at work, Kat and I did not steal toys from children or poop in our pants.

I miss pronouns.