the problem with English

The temperatures are climbing up to 25…28… on the digital thermometers on pharmacy signs and street corners. The Spaniards are still shuffling around town in their winter coats, boots, and tights, while the Americans stick out like sore thumbs in their flowery skirts, tank tops, and flip flops. One of my professors said winter fashion sticks around among Spanish women until Semana Santa/ Feria (middle to end of April).

My California blood thinks this is hot. The temperature supposedly gets up into the 50s during the summer, which is roughly 200 degrees fahrenheit according to my Spanish buddy’s iffy conversion skills (to which I replied “¡No puede ser!”). But the heat isn’t the point, though I’m a little afraid I’m not going to survive. It’s the division in fashion, as in every other aspect of life, between Americans and Spaniards.

The most prevalent image of the American college student in Seville is similar, if not identical, to the American college student in general. The blonde who staggers up to the hamburger stand on calle Betis at three in the morning with heavy makeup, high heels, clothing not appropriate for the season, looking a bit disheveled and most likely drunk. Then she says in the most annoying non-Spanish accent ever, “Por favor, puedo tener un hamburger con (pointing) esto, esto, esto… and carrots. How do you say… Como se dice carrots? Zanahorias. Quiero zanahorias también. Gracias.”

Cultural interlude…
Instead of going for the more polite, please and thank you English way of asking for something, Spaniards generally don’t say please or thank you and go straight for the direct “Dame una hamburguesa.” (command: Give me a hamburger.) So perhaps I can’t blame someone for not picking this up, I for one feel as uncomfortable saying this command to shopkeepers as I do saying “Dime” or “Si” when I answer the phone (you informal command: Tell me or Yes instead of the American way, Hello or Hi). In fact, I usually try to avoid saying the commando shopkeepers taltogether and go for the more ambiguous incomplete sentence “Una hamburguesa.”
…

In any case, this is the American college student that I always exchange looks with my friends should I happen to see her and hear the ominous “Puedo tener…?” This is the image of the American college student that I feel I have to constantly have to erase from Spanish people’s minds. The American college student that is studying abroad to experience the nightlife, to speak English, to do anything but learn about a different culture or a different language. Because I am the American college student who isn’t blonde, doesn’t wear heavy makeup or clothing not appropriate for the season, and tries her very hardest to speak Spanish correctly, to fit in, and most importantly, to learn.

Maybe this isn’t my problem with Americans. But I think its part of my problem. I was walking with a friend yesterday and we ran into a Spaniard who he knew from one of his classes. They talked for a bit about the class, the homework, and went their separate ways… I commented that the guy seemed pretty cool, pretty friendly; someone my friend should get to know better. As it turned out, they went for a few drinks after class and the guy was talking about how Americans separate themselves by speaking in English. And there are so many of us, so we’re always separated from Spaniards by language, even if we do speak Spanish pretty well. I think if he went to Santa Barbara he would speak in Spanish with whoever possible because it’s hard and scary to be in a country where you’re always a little bit under water about what’s going on, but regardless, I wish we were better. I wish I was better. And I could be better, but I don’t want to completely forget about my American friends either.

I’m volunteering at an elementary school two mornings a week, helping the two English teachers at the school with their English classes of various levels. Yesterday I was reading off words to the more advanced class for a dictation test, and none of the kids could understand my American pronunciation of the words. No one really had a problem with it, the teacher just re-pronounced the words and moved on, but American just seems to be the more inferior brand of English in this neck of the woods. And American people in general; maybe that’s my problem.

I got in a little disagreement with a friend at an Indian restaurant on Monday about speaking in Spanish. The funny part was that we had the disagreement in Spanish… And the restaurant was small, there was a British couple, two Spanish couples, and the waiter spoke everything. I always want to speak in Spanish as much as possible, because I’m here to hopefully become sufficiently fluent and I feel like I’m not getting the most out of my time here if I’m not. He argued that we wouldn’t have the same relationships with our American friends if we spoke in Spanish more than English. It’s certainly an interesting question. But as I was telling my Belgian friend last night in Spanish (even though she speaks English we only speak in Spanish), I don’t feel any different with her than I do with anyone else; the language doesn’t hinder my personality.

Even so, after a whole day of writing in Spanish, listening to professors in Spanish, and speaking to my international friends in Spanish on Friday, it was nice to relax a little with an American friend… in English.

Note: I wrote most of this post a few weeks ago when it actually was starting to get hotter, but then it got cold again and rained for a whole week… and now it’s kind of nice again. But we’ll see.

You. Me. Him. Her. Them. Us.

I have problems with pronouns.

Spanish is organized in such a way that often it is not necessary to use pronouns. The ending of the verbs indicate the subject of the sentence, and the two letter object pronouns indicate the object. It’s pretty straightforward, but you have to know what you’re saying before you say it or else you’ll get hung up on the objects that go before the verbs and the subject that determines the end of words. My comprehension of Spanish, both written and spoken, is very good, but I still get hung up on the pronouns, or lack thereof. It can be very ambiguous, especially for the careless listener. The gender of the subject is oftentimes hidden, and the subjunctive form of verbs further puts an air of uncertainty on the sentence. The verb ending for el, ella, and usted (him, her, and you formal) is the same, so for me it gets very awkward trying to address someone formally because I feel like they don’t know I’m talking to them. Subjunctive further blurs the lines, because it indicates doubt, uncertainty, and the desire for someone to do something. Today in translation we were translating instructions for the installation of a CD-ROM drive in a computer, and the most recognized way of writing instructions is using the you formal command, which is in subjunctive. So translated it’s kind of like, I command you to do this… if you want.

If any of that makes any sense. Lately I’ve been noticing that people’ll be talking to me, and they’ll say something that I understand, but then they’ll look at me, and they’ll wait for a response. And then I realize they were talking about me, and I say, “¿Yo?” or sometimes I forget myself and say, “¿Mi?” like the English me. The other day I was standing with a friend, half listening to his conversation with our magazine advisor. And then I realized he (notice the ambiguous he) was talking to/about me, so I said, “¿Yo?” really loud. I need to get over that. Obviously if someone is talking to me they’re talking about me.

upsidedown and backward

The university is equally as ambiguous as the pronouns.

The main departments of University of Seville are in this massive white concrete square building with Corinthian pillars and four entrances. When Sevilla was a big port city (thanks to the fake river/canal) it was the tobacco factory, but in 1501 or so the fabrica de tobaccos moved across the river to where I live, Los Remedios, and the old fabrica became a university. Now the inside floors are mostly white marble, two stories of endless aulas and libraries without clear signs. Class scheduling is nightmarish, and at least once a week the students get to class only to find that the room as been changed, or the professor decided not to show, or he’s just 15-minutes late… Today I knew something amuk when the filología department held an assembly in the room I have my classes in. So we stood there for awhile, no one knowing where to go, no sign on the door, and no where to check. We were eventually herded into another room, the room we were originally assigned to for the class, but that was changed the first week. The second class was the same, even the professor didn’t know what was going on. I really don’t understand how it all gets done.

As a result of all this waiting around, we were talking before my relato (short story) class about the striking resemblance the teacher has to Horacio Quiroga. Quiroga happens to be the author we’ve been studying for the past two months and the very same author who inspired the name of my blog.

I promise, though, that not everything is backwards or, if not backwards, then different than i'm used to. Because even though the buses are slow and unreliable, the university doesn’t know where its classes are, and my señora still doesn’t have a phone…it’s not all like this. I visited friends in a little pueblo of Sevilla (Utrera) this weekend, and three of them (the German, the Colombian, and the Guatemalan) live in a beautiful little apartment that isn’t freezing cold, has a microwave and an electric stove, a little interior patio to hang their clothes, and the toilets flush toilet paper. It’s also like a quarter of the price of living in Santa Barbara!

current events

Big news today: “ETA anuncia un alto de fuego permanente.”

I really had no idea what this meant. I knew I had seen ETA before, but I thought it was the name of the government or a political party in Catalunya. The alto confounded me, because it usually means tall, or raise. Fuego? Fire? After a series of questions to my señora and intent listening of the news I finally got it. ETA is a Basque terrorist organization. An “alto de fuego” is a cease-fire. Permanente? Well I’m still a little shaky about whether or not the cease-fire is permanent or temporary, because my señora seemed to think it was temporary… but reguardless. Big news.
The NYT explains better than me.

F is for Friday

I was intercepted by a woman in red and white stripes this morning. She cornered me in the middle of a plaza with her microphone and her cameraman and I stood bewildered as she spoke to me rapidly in Spanish. "No hablo español muy bien (I don't speak Spanish very well)," I stammered. She smiled and rephrased her question. "¿Viniste a Sevilla con una agencia de viaje? (Did you come to Seville with a travel agent?)" "No..." and she looked puzzled, so I continued, "Estoy aquí con una agencia... programa de estudiar... en otro pais (I'm here with an agency... a study program... in another country)." She gave me a weird look and said "Muchisimas gracias" and moved on to her next victim.

That was pretty much the worst sentence i've ever formulated in Spanish. I could have said so much to make her think twice about ever stopping someone on the street again, assuming they're a tourist. But instead I floundered like the foreigner I am.

and the heat begins

My first direct contact with the Mediterranean Sea, and I was lounging at the top of a colorful rope jungle gym on the beach with two little girls and my travel companion. Little girls of their age – about nine or ten – haven’t yet learned small talk skills, but we had nonetheless fallen into the tried and true discussion of travelers – languages. I thought they were speaking French when they first ran up, but they later interjected British English into our conversation, asking where we were from. It turned out we knew five languages between the four of us, English and Spanish of course, and three others that one of the girls proudly rattled off. They soon skipped away down the dusty beach, taking some of the pressure off the rickety jungle gym and leaving me to contemplate the ocean, the sunset, and the Spanish air that suddenly got warm.

Malaga looks like Hawaii, like Puerto Vallarta, like Oregon, and the little inlet and stretch of Goleta Beach off to the east side of UCSB’s campus. It’s Sevilla without the high fashion, the skinny, cobbled streets, the shopping, and the construction. It’s slightly industrial on its shores, but its sea breezes whisper “vacation…” Perhaps because I was just there on the weekend, but it seemed sleepier than Sevilla somehow, even though I slept five floors up on the main road with my windows open. I have heard from several Spaniards that Malaga’s beaches aren’t ideal, and it’s true: the dusty sand turned my black shoes to tan. But the stunning views of the deep blue Mediterranean didn’t stop me from realizing how much I miss living on the ocean…

We spent our first three hours there wandering around the area west of downtown laden with backpacks, trying to find the cheapest hostel in town. At around four we started to get a little worried, our map and directions weren’t very good, and it was hot. We rode the bus downtown to try our luck at other hostels the guidebook recommended, and ended up in a 40€ room in a two-star, fifth floor hostel in an office building with a Ukranian front desk attendant that spoke thickly accented Spanish and addressed us with “ustedes” (you formal) like no Spaniard ever would. The room was painted yellow and white and had a shower and a sink in one corner, and a window in the other corner that overlooked the ocean. The plaza across the street played Latin American music from 10.30 to 22.30, and the cars on the busy street below ran and beeped all night long. On Sunday morning we threw leftover peanuts at passersby and watched as policemen attempted to stop traffic on the street for 15 minutes in order to let marathon runners go by.

Malaga is most famous for being the birthplace of Pablo Picasso. They have an amazingly comprehensive Picasso Museum with the most paintings by Picasso I’ve ever seen in one place… they also had a free concierge where we left our bags for the whole day! Some of Picasso’s most famous works, including Guernica, are in Madrid, but Museo Picasso was nonetheless amazing. They also have a big hill where the Alcazar and Catilla are located, a grueling walk, but worth it for the amazing views.

I’m going to stop before I start sounding like a guidebook.

lucky 17

¡FELIZ CUMPELAÑOS SARA!

I wish I could be there to celebrate with you... or buy you a ticket to celebrate with me in Spain.

la frontera: not that anyone will be able to read this

Pude ver el mar cuando me desperté. El mar bonito y calma, totalmente azul y verde como el cielo. Me imagino que, para la gente marroquí al lado de la calle, el mar también pudo representar oportunidad e imposibilidad. Porque al otro lado de esté pequeño mar había el oportunidad para una vida más rica, pero al mismo tiempo imposible porque ya no son allí.

El aparcamiento cerca de la frontera entre Maruecos y Ceuta, el territorio española, era llena de gente marroquí, cono al lado de la calle. Un inmenso sala de esperar con la esperanza tan cerca como la frontera con toda la gente que quisieron cruzar pero no pudieron. La cola de gente que nunca para y los policías que empujaron a la gente en la cola para mantener orden. Pero todavía no había orden en esta frontera, porque la gente estaba empujando y gritando también. Es una cuestión de dinero y comida, vida y muerto para ellos. Para mi, solamente una cuestión de mi billete de barco, pero pase por este cola de confusión para dar la policía mi pasaporte azul sin problema. La gente continuaba gritando en otra lengua. Soy un ciudadano afortunado de los estados unidos, y fronteras no significan casi-nada para mi pasaporte azul.

El área al otro lado de los policías había más tranquila. Un calle y acera como desierto, pero todavía inaccesible y extraña a los marroquíes en la cola.

UN pensamiento...believe it or not

My memory of things that happen in Spanish is fragmented and unreliable. I find that when I’m recounting what someone said in Spanish later in English, I put into their mouths things I think they would say in English without really thinking about it. Automatic translation, taking into account facial expression, words, tone of voice. It’s really quite amazing, if not a bit unreliable. Perhaps not so much with the woman, except I promptly forgot after she told me how long she’d lived in the building, substituting instead “a long time.” A more potent example would be last night, when I was hanging out at a café/bar for several hours, (a “Spanish meal”) with two Spaniards and a girl from the Netherlands. Maybe it was just the feeling I got from the night, from the company, and from the stories (in English) I told about it after, but it seems that I was constructing these foreign friends into something I could understand better in my head. I only have a vague concept of conversation conventions and cultural norms in Spain, but by putting English words into their mouths they become something that’s not so different to me. Not so mysterious. And we get along just fine.

abuelita

There’s an old lady who lives in my building that I see every so often when I come home for lunch.

She stands with her cane on the step before the door in the shade waiting for someone to come open the door. She has keys, but I think it’s hard for her to use them because the lock is temperamental and the door is heavy. So she stands there, saying as I walk up smiling, key in hand, that she has all the time in the world and she doesn’t mind waiting.

Then she ushers me in and up the stairs before her, calling me hija, saying hasta luego before our conversation is over. She shuffles across the floor toward the stairs and tells me “poco a poco.” Little by little.

And I still hear her shuffling and grunting up the stairs as I unlock the door to my third floor apartment.

Citrus

I was sitting comfortably on the patio of a Moroccan household in the middle of the medina in Rabat on Friday laughing as hard as I’ve laughed since I’ve been abroad. The woman of the house, fifty-three with a white lace veil covering her face and a pink bathrobe, had just forcibly persuaded Esteban, the American man of our group, to eat a huge orange with only a smile and some words in Arabic and French. We had just eaten a huge and delicious meal of olives, round white bread, rice, Coca Cola, and a veggie and chicken stew with our hands. Our collective laughter was echoing off the colorful tiles and the high ceilings, louder than the droning of Arabic and French on the television.

So we lived for two days. A Californian, Texan, and Minnesotan adopted into a family of seven Moroccans: a mother (whose husband has passed away), and their three sons and three daughters, ranging in ages from 31 to 11. It sounds like the setup to a bad joke, but it was truly amazing being a part of this cohesive family for a couple days, even if they didn’t speak much English. The truth is (and I reiterate), you don’t need a common language for jokes to be funny, photos, facial expressions, and video games, or sitting around the patio on a Saturday night with the whole family snacking on baked goods for dinner while the rain pounds on the sky light. The family bond was tangible, in Morocco as well as Spain, and it was obvious there was no place any of them would have rather been.


The concept of privacy in Morocco, as well as Spain, doesn’t exist. In fact, there is no real word for privacy in Spanish, but the concept has developed in recent years along with the English-derived word “privacidad” (o algo así). The house we stayed in consisted of, aside from the patio, a kitchen, and two bathrooms, four rooms with cushioned benches lining the walls. Downstairs these rooms were colorful and ornate, to be used for eating, formal occasions, family gatherings, or sleeping. Upstairs, most of the family members that didn’t sleep elsewhere slept in a particularly big room, while the three Americans slept in the other. We were given two furry blankets, a pillow, and a section of bench each. The youngest daughter of the family (age 11) was, it seemed to us, the “Cinderelli” of the family. She was up at the crack of dawn helping to make breakfast or running out to buy some last minute items, taking out the trash, making beds, answering the door, serving and clearing our breakfast and other meals of the day (basically, doing jobs the youngest of my family would never stand for). She was the only family member who was monolingual in Moroccan Arabic, so communicating with her was hopeless besides smiles and the occasional badly pronounced word or phrase from our Lonely Planet guide to her language. The rest of the family spoke at least a couple words of English, at least enough to generally communicate with the three of us who were full of questions and thanks.


Los chicos: Esteban (el americano), Adiel (oldest boy), Monsef (youngest), Ishane (middle).


Las chicas: Nadia (the youngest girl), the cat Leo, Fatimazara (middle), Brett (la americana), ME (la otra), Keltoum (la madre), Hanene (oldest).

Just meeting this family shattered all my stereotypes about the Muslim/ Arabic world. Morocco is 98% Muslim, 1% Christian, and 1% Jewish. Moroccan Arabic is a separate dialect from written Arabic, and the languages/dialects that are spoken in other Arab countries. Five times a day there is an eerie call to prayer that permeates every windy street of the city, and many women choose to wear veils. But not everyone prays or covers their skin, just as not everyone abstains from drinking, smoking, or physical contact with the opposite sex. It’s just like anywhere else in the world.

Tainted

I awoke Monday morning to the sunny Mediterranean Sea just coming into view… a greenish blue calm settling over me, accented by the surprising silence of the 15 of us in the van. It was a long four days, and as we drove along the road bordering the sea I think we were all thinking about how exhausted, dirty, and changed we felt. Either that, or we were sleeping.

The view was what you might imagine of the Mediterranean: green grass, blue water, sun, a jagged coastline dotted with buildings in the Andalucía-white style. We were headed from the little mountainous town of Chefchaouen to the port, which happens to be in Ceuta, a city in the only region of Morocco still owned by Spain. The poverty of Morocco continued along the sea as we drove, little shacks and souvenir stands on what would be couple-million-dollar property in California. The people were plentiful, walking along the road, most women veiled and most men robed. Where they were going, I don’t know. The parking lot before the border between Morocco and Spain presented the same mystery. It was filled with people, some selling wares, some waiting, and many starting at the 15 of us as we unloaded the van and made our way to the border windows. As we were waiting for our departure from Morocco to be verified, the line of pushing and shoving Moroccans waiting to get across the border got longer and louder. When my passport was stamped and ready, I followed my professor to the front of the line, and watched as the border official yelled at people in Arabic and beat them back to make way for me and my fellow, legal American travelers. We walked rapidly along the sidewalk of the no-man’s zone bordered by high fences and barbed wire, until we finally passed the gate into Spain, the ocean still adjacent but barely visible over the walls and fences surrounding us.


This border between Morocco and Spain in Africa “el tarajal” is the most unequal in the world. The difference in per capita income between third-world Morocco and first-world Spain is astronomical, and this small seaside town of Ceuta is where it all comes to a head. I knew Moroccans had problems getting permission to travel to other countries, because I had several conversations about the matter with three Moroccan friends a few days before in Rabat (the capital). But I wasn’t prepared for the extreme confusion, the frustration, the desperation I saw in the faces and actions of the people at the border. I have no idea what was going on; the languages these nameless faces spoke were French and Moroccan Arabic…possibly others…and it was obvious that the border guards weren’t keen on letting them through for whatever reason. Well, for security reasons, for law reasons, for income and political and nationality and motivation reasons. Maybe not for fairness reasons.



It’s hard for me to understand. I was fortunate enough to be born in the United States, so I’m allowed to travel anywhere in the world at my leisure with my navy blue VIP pass. People like my friend Amine, a bright, motivated Moroccan student about my age who is fluent in Moroccan Arabic, French, and English has never traveled out of Morocco, and probably never will. Another friend Adnan is lucky enough to have traveled to the U.S. and Europe, and he’s hoping to study chemical engineering at UC Berkeley. But even though his family is in the higher level of income in the country, visas out of Morocco are hard to come by.

Yet they’re amazingly welcoming. I only saw this dissatisfaction and desperation in my last taste of Morocco. If I had written Sunday I would have started with this: (see above)

Photos in this post courtesy of Señor Esteban (who also has something to say about Morocco if you're interested). Thank you!