Looking back, my desire to learn Spanish, or indeed my love of most things Spanish, stems from my school days. It started when our drama teacher introduced us to Gabriel Garcia Lorca and, simultaneously, one of my school friends, who was studying A level Spanish and about to embark on a series of trips around Latin America, told me it was an easy language to learn. Foolishly, I believed her, and bobbed along under this misconception for the intervening 'x' number of years, thinking that one day, despite my distinct lack of belief in miracles, I would miraculously just 'pick it up'. In fairness, there is a lot to be said for the 'just picking it up' approach to language learning. To some extent it works, but you need to be constantly surrounded by it and, in any case, you are not going to advance very quickly or meaningfully without a reasonably solid starting point of basic structural knowledge and vocabulary. My only real experience of speaking another language (and I distinguish this from the various rote-answering, speaking and listening/ reading comprehension activities I encountered whilst learning French at school) is the Albanian I pretty much just 'picked up' via the in-laws and associated friends. I could get by on some fairly simple conversational structures and set phrases and could sit in a room and guess at the tone and gist of a conversation, as much, if not more, from the cadence and rhythms of people's voices, as the words being spoken. I am not sure I could really call this either understanding or contributing in any meaningful sense. Nevertheless, this is one aspect of my Spanish language study which is currently missing - experience and context. In its absence, I have to rely on what I can get from all-to-brief trips to Spain, the very rare occasions I can actually convince Spanish friends to speak Spanish with me, the stilted conversation with my English born-and-bred Spanish teacher (that's not to dismiss his contribution, he does a fine job) and Spanish language films.
Anyway, I diverge, because whilst I could talk in onerous detail about my motivations for and experiences of learning Spanish, that is not very helpful for anyone who has any curiosity about the language. I always thought of Spanish as 'my' language, even when I knew next to nothing about it. Now I know next to something, I would like to share some of the things that might get the curious started down the right track. Call it an alternative, absolute beginners guide to Spanish, if you like. In reality, it is a very limited and motley collection of things that I think are either kind of cool or just downright funny about the Spanish language. You might want to look out for some of these next time you are on holiday.
1. The statement as a question
The best thing by far about the Spanish language is that you can turn a statement into a question simply by your tone of voice; or, if you are writing it down, by using question marks. If writing, you are then supposed to stick an upside-down question mark at the beginning, which is a bit fiddly I grant you. (I have noticed lately that not everyone seems to bother with this. I'm not sure if this is just an example of a bad habit creeping in on Facebook or a genuine trend). In any case, a statement such as "Estas cansada" (You are tired) retains the same form in question format - "¿Estas cansada?", which is pretty cool. Not every question follows this format of course but it's good that it can.
2. No
'No' is also very useful. Not only is it extremely easy to remember for English speakers but it can be added to the front of any verb to make it mean the opposite e.g. "Tengo dinero" (I have money), becomes the opposite ("No tengo dinero") as quickly as it does in real life. And, of course, 'no' still means 'no', if you catch my drift.
3. Que/ qué
This is one of those things that I did actually pick up in context. It was right at the start of my recent burst of Spanish learning and I was listening to a drunken conversation between a native and non-native Spanish speaker. As such, I think they were speaking a little more slowly and deliberately than usual. It's also possible I tuned into it more easily because I, too, was pretty drunk (believe it or not, drunkenness can play a key role in language acquisition). As someone who grew up with 'Fawlty Towers', I was of course entirely familiar with the accented "qué" as the equivalent of "what" in English. However, during the course of this conversation, I quickly deduced that "que" (subsequently I learnt this version has no accent) also means and is used in the same way as "that" or "than" in English. This may seem like a tiny breakthrough but it has proved extremely useful, in no small part because it leaves me able to make comparisons such as, "Estoy mas borracho que tú" (I am more drunk than you). 4. Punctuation
As someone who makes their living from slavishly reinforcing the use of capitals in every title, acronym and use of the personal pronoun, the lack of capitals in written Spanish is one aspect I find difficult to get to grips with. Some, however, might see it as liberating. Basically, apart from starting a sentence, capitals are almost nowhere to be seen. Even the word 'Spanish' isn't capitalised it seems. It can be a little confusing at times, especially when you are not sure if you are reading a title of something or not. However, at least you won't get shot down by the punctuation police for not including them. Conversely, Spanish people in general seem to be very fond of the exclamation mark. I'm not just talking about one either - it's not uncommon to see four or five ending a sentence. Exclamation marks used to be something that I was extremely snobbish about - I virtually had a physical aversion to them. Now I chuck them in all over the place. It seems rude not to.
5. Inanimate things can have voices - apparently
I am only basing this finding on an online Spanish course I recently enrolled on. I never heard anyone actually say this but, evidently, one way of asking what something is or what it does, is to say "¿Qué quiere decir?", which literally means "What does it want to say?" I mean, how cute is that?
6. If you are stuck, it is possible to guess
For English speakers, one of the beauties of learning a Latin-based language is that, thanks to the tyranny of the Medieval church, we now have a whole raft of vocabulary that crosses over into central Europe and beyond. This simply means that is possible to guess - or to put it another way, "Es posible que te adivines" (or I believe this is how you would put it anyway - I am just wrapping my head around the subjunctive tense). Actually the comparison I was making here was with the word 'possible' but, having just looked up the verb 'guess', you can make some connections here too. It is similar to the word 'divine', which in English, apart from an adjective used to describe someone rather fantastic (or holy, if that is your inclination), is also a verb that describes the action of looking for something or making an educated guess. And, yes, the fact that I can see that probably does make me a bit of a language nerd.
7. It can be very poetic
Of course, one of the dangers of the many 'true friends' (as they are referred to by most language teachers) is their nemesis, the 'false friend'. The best-known of these is the oft-quoted 'embarazada', which actually means pregnant. I think we all agree that a mistake here could be embarrassing. The most recent one I discovered was the word 'trampa', which doesn't mean 'tramp' but 'trap' and the only reason I mention it is because it cropped up during a discussion about art I was having with a Spanish friend of mine. He was talking about an idea, which he referred to as 'una trampa para los ojos' (literally, 'a trap for the eyes'), less romantically known as an optical illusion. I know which one I prefer.
8. Vowel sounds and dipthongs
One of the the nicest things about Spanish is that there are very few dipthongs - those horrible things that combine two or three vowels to make a different sound altogether. In Spanish, for the most part, what you see is what you get - well, at least as far as vowels go. I won't mention the consonants, except to say that I have been semi-reliably informed that no English person will ever be able to pronounce a 'd' properly in Spanish. The 'rs' are pretty sexy, though. Next time you meet a hot, Latin person, get them to roll their 'rs' for you - you'll see what I mean.
9. Cool words
In order to emotionally connect with a language in the early stages of language learning, I think it is important to have your own personal list of 'cool' words. The first on my list was the word 'naranja' (orange). Don't ask me why. It just seemed so odd to me at the time, it took on some kind of mythical quality. Now I think I tend to rate words according to their usefulness and novelty, and the relationship between those two variables. If it's new and I can see it's going to serve me well in the near future, then I get excited about it. Maybe even more so than watching a hot, Latin person rollling their 'rs'.
10. Masculine/ feminine nouns and 'hedging your bets'
I find it amusing that there are two ways to say 'I love you' in Spanish ('te quiero'; 'te amo'). This once came up as a subject for discussion in a Spanish class, and our teacher informed us that you only tend to use the second in relation to family members or children. Later on it became the subject of some 'girl chat' with a female, Spanish friend. Her take was a bit different; that the second only tends to get used when the bloke in question really means it. I am not sure that hers' is the definitive answer; I think it is subject to debate, or at least that what the internet is telling me - I just like the idea that there is a way of saying 'I love you' that is a bit more open to interpretation. On the other hand, when talking about a friend, then it is impossible to do this without specifying whether the friend in question is male or female (un amigo/ una amiga). I have heard a few Spanish friends (entirely male, it has to be said) bemoaning the fact that English doesn't allow for this kind of clarity. When you also take into consideration the fact that any noun becomes masculine when being discussed in the plural, you can't help thinking that Spanish serves the male of the species quite well. Ok, I realise that this is potentially quite irritating, but at the moment it makes me smile. I am looking forward to discovering what other subtleties are out there, and, yes, probably laughing about them...
Coming back to my original misapprehension that Spanish is an easy language to learn, I don't actually think that any language is easy to learn and certainly not out of context. It is fun trying though and, if nothing else, you can laugh at your own idiocy, as you make feeble attempts to put it into practise. We all have stories about the ludicrous things we realise we have said to people only moments after saying them. I also find it funny that, a lot of the time, I still only understand what shopkeepers have said to me after I have walked away and the transaction is complete. Hopefully, in time, my brain will start to process things a bit more quickly and I won't have to struggle quite so hard to make these connections. In the meantime, the least I can do is take some joy in the language's little idiosyncrasies. It would be nice if my list inspired someone else to take up the quest too. Word of warning, though - if you hear anyone talking about 18 conjugations per tense, cover your ears. You really don't want to know about this yet.
