foreign words / pain in chocolate

When are words foreign and what do about them when they appear in text?

This affects you even if you're not a writer, because you're a reader, right? You're deep into a novel where the character has travelled to... Madrid, say, and she wants to buy soap and can't find it. She's looked up the word in her Spanish-English dictionary, and has tried and tried and tried again to ask for jabón, except that she doesn't speak Spanish and doesn't know j is pronounced like an emphatic h in English (because in Spanish h is silent), and the accent means that you truly have to sound that syllable stronger. She's rubbing her arms and miming washing, though what she actually wants to wash are her underpants. The scene doesn't work with the word soap. Spanish is necessary.

Even outside of desperate linguistic situations, a writer might simply choose to use foreign words. There's that old saw about local colour. Or the simple fact that a person travelling usually adopts some local lingo. In Berlin you take the U-bahn, not the metro, which is what you would take in Montreal. 

If you write or read about anywhere else but where you're at home, the words of the place seep in. That's a good thing, right? 

And once they've seeped in, are the words still foreign? In Montreal even Anglos buy beer at the dépanneur. The word has been folded into the lexicon.  

To the reader, however, the word might be foreign. Does that call for italics? 

What about words that aren't so obvious? A character steps into a patisserie and asks for pain au chocolat. That's what he would order because that's what it's called. But an English reader might do a double take, wondering why anyone would order pain in chocolate. Does it come in raspberry too? The hesitation only lasts a couple of seconds. The reader isn't stoo-pid! Obviously it's a French word for a French pastry. Keep reading. 

But in that instant of hesitation, the bubble of fiction was broken, and even if the bubble seals again almost immediately, why break it?

Sometimes the foreign word is the only word that fits. There is no English equivalent for medina. That's me walking through the medina in Fez.

Or the foreign word sounds right because it's the word that would be used in a particular situation. My character in Vienna doesn't ask for coffee. She orders a kleiner brauner because that's what it's called. Sure, she could have said cappuccino or latte. The waiter would have brought her a kleiner brauner anyhow--and she would be the one who would look disobliging.

There are times I like the sound and feel of a word in another language, and for those readers who understand that language, I want to share it. In the new manuscript I'm working on, I describe marmormehl. Literally translated, it means marble flour. To my ears, marble flour does not have the resonance--the sense of marble being ground--that the German does. So I can't help myself. I need to write marmormehl. Though I then repeat myself by writing marble meal in English. The repetition sounds fake--I agree--but what about the convention of writing isn't fake?

As a writer, I prefer not to italicize foreign words if they're not foreign to the character who thinks or speaks them. I understand and support the growing tendency not to italicize foreign words in text. Why separate it from normal font if it belongs to the language the character understands? 

But what about the reader? What about words--like pain--that mean one thing in French and another in English? Using italics lets the reader know it's not the English word. 

When I'm reading and come across words I don't understand, I'm grasping for meaning. If the novel is being told from the point of view of a character who wouldn't understand either, that's fine. We're both lost. 

Just now, however, I'm reading a novel with lines of dialogue in another language the characters understand but I don't. English words don't follow and the context leaves the meaning unclear. I'm in the dark and I'm the reader! This may be realistic, but is it wise? 

Someone argued with me once about not using italics for foreign words because it posited the reader, who might understand that foreign language, as an other. We live in times that have politicized font. 

I'm not trying to make my reader feel like the odd one out, but I also don't want to confuse the reader. I see the value of using a small visual tip that a word is different from the rest of the text--to let the reader know a character isn't trying to buy pain.  

In my novel Five Roses, coming out this summer, the words that aren't English are italicized. In my first novel, Arrhythmia, the words that weren't English weren't. For the next book... I don't know.   

These are jacaranda blossoms on a terrace in Mexico. Jacaranda was originally a Tupi word adopted by Portuguese, then adopted by English. No longer a foreign word. This is how language grows.

doubt in English versus Spanish / the subjunctive

I am trying to understand the many uses of the subjunctive in Spanish. I'm familiar with the verb mode since I had to learn it once upon a time in French and in German.
In English we tend to avoid using the subjunctive in the rare instances when it can still be used.
Examples would be...
"We advise that he try to talk to her."
"If she were to buy apples, he would make a pie." Most people would say, "If she bought apples, he would make a pie."
There are other examples, but I'm not writing about the mothy use of the subjunctive in English.
I'm studying for a Spanish exam, specifically the subjunctive, which is used frequently and with great variety. I had hoped to learn it just enough to recognize it when reading. I didn't actually want to learn how to use it. Of course, I didn't realize how often it's used.
I went to the Spanish bookstore, Las Americas, on St-Laurent to find a book I could read comfortably. I ended up in the YA section and bought a book for 10-yr-olds and up. I can read it without a dictionary, and more or less understand the words I don't already know from the context. It's called Luna de Senegal, by Agustín Fernández Paz, and is the story of girl who emigrates from Senegal with her family to Spain. The illustrations by Marina Seoane are lovely.

However, I was astounded by the range of verb modes in a simple story for children. The present, the futuro perfecto, the conditional, the pretérito, the imperfecto--and the subjunctive.
In Spanish the subjunctive must be used for any number of expressions. Some examples: It is necessary that, I want that, I hope that, Maybe, Hopefully, As soon as, In order that, How great that, How awful that, There is no one who...
Rather than memorize lists, I would sooner try to understand the rationale. Our teacher, Alicia, says that the instance there's a nuance of doubt or subjectivity the subjunctive must be used. I understand the concept.
But here's my problem: "I don't think that he's coming" obviously signifies doubt. But to my way of thinking, "I think that he's coming", equally implies doubt. If I were sure, I would say, "He's coming." I wouldn't add the hesitation or uncertainty that my Anglo ears hear in "I think that". Ditto for "I believe that". "I believe that" sounds entirely subjective to me. A rhetorical flourish that intimates an awareness I might be wrong. ???
And now we get into the even foggier realm of "It appears that..." Appearance is not real. Appearance is what you imagine or think or suppose or is likely. It might end up being real, but in the moment a person says, "It appears that...", that person has a reason for not saying, "It is..."

And yet, in Spanish, "it appears that" does not take the subjunctive!
I don't get it.  

the stolen purse / mexican police / learning spanish / mexico city 2014

I can't say how it happened because I don't know.
We'd sat down to have lunch in a small restaurant. Lunch in Mexico City usually means a meal of three courses. I don't like to eat that much in the afternoon, but when you're travelling, it's best to go with the flow. My one attempt to explain to a waiter that all I wanted was a piece of bread with cheese and a slice of avocado was disastrous. I got stale bread, an inch-high mound of melted chewing gum, a thin smear of avocado, and the whole doused with meat grease and drippings because the cook didn't want such a drab plate to leave her kitchen.
The three-course meals are actually only one meal served in three stages: 1) soup or salad 2) rice or pasta 3) meat or fish. Vegetarian options are nil. When I said vegetariano--which I'd checked in several sources to make sure I had the right word--I met with blank faces. When I said no carne--no meat--the waiters shook their heads.
You're thinking: this is Mexico; doesn't she know about beans? You go to Mexico. Try the beans. They're heavily salted and dosed with animal fat. I would sooner eat meat.

I haven't travelled a lot, but I've travelled. I know not to carry my passport and money in a purse. I still carry some form of bag because where else can I keep those daily necessaries I like to have within reach? Notebook, lip balm, kleenex, gum...
The bag I took to Mexico was a half-moon I'd sewn from a piece of paisley fabric I bought on St-Hubert. It wasn't even lined. I'd made it in a rush to use on a particular afternoon--and kept using it. Here, in Montreal, anyone with a decent eye would have recognized it was homemade.
Usually in a restaurant or cafe, even with nothing important in it, I keep my bag on my lap, but that day I slung it on the back of my chair, which was against the wall and more than a meter from the street with another table between ours and the street. The bag was still there when I reached for it to get my camera--yup, I had my camera in my bag--to take some pix of the restaurant interior. The gigantic papaya and cactus pads on the counter. The ongoing work of making tortillas. The woman pinched a ball of dough onto the press, squeezed it flat, flipped it to the griddle. The cooked tortillas got dropped into a large round basket. She moved non-stop, if at a relaxed pace. Depending on the meal you ordered, the waitress brought a stack of tortillas from the basket to your table.
I can't remember what R and I ate that day. I probably braved the salad--ie the tap water in which the lettuce was washed--refused the rice/pasta--ordered some form of tortilla dish.

When we finished and I reached for my bag to leave, it was gone. Nobody in the restaurant seemed to have noticed anything. Or--and I don't want to think this--they'd noticed and were complicit. The two men next to us were eating and talking. They were in their shirt sleeves. They had nowhere to put a bag. R recalled seeing an antsy man who'd sat at the table closest to the street without ordering a meal. He was talking on a cell phone. Or pretending to. But he was long gone.
I was trying to recall what I had in my purse. My digital camera was already three years old and not an expensive camera to begin with. But to me it was valuable because it was mine, and it had four days of pictures on it.
My prescription sunglasses would be useless to anyone who didn't have my exact prescription and focal point. Though I suppose the lenses could be popped out and the frames... I don't know what the frames would be worth in Mexico. I had to buy medication at one point and it was a twelfth of the cost it would have been in Canada, so maybe frames are really cheap in Mexico too. But, for me, those prescription sunglasses were a luxury--the first time in my life I'd ever had prescription sunglasses. A special treat.
My notebook, my notebook... I write fiction based on scenes and descriptions in my notebooks. Even if someone could read English and figure out what I'd written--of what use would my notes about Mexico City be to anyone but myself? I'm still more sad about my notebook and the pix on my camera than anything else.
There were other odds and ends. A scarf wide enough to make a shawl, but light enough to carry. Extra heart medication in an unidentified bottle. What if the thief took one of the blue pills to see what effect it had. He or she wouldn't notice anything unless they were attuned to how their heart beat. Maybe then he or she would pop the rest of the pills and it would make his or her heart stop. Ha! I should look that up--whether an overdose of Sotalol could be toxic.

We didn't immediately think of going to the police because I hadn't lost any money. Was I going to complain because my favourite hair clips were stolen? My notebook? My photos? I felt so dumb. You can travel and be careful all the time. It's the one time you're not that something happens. I was mugged in 1985 in Barcelona and that was a lot more scary. I lost my passport and $5000 of travellers' cheques. Travelling and having access to your money is so much easier since the advent of banking cards. You only have to go to a machine and take out what you need. Before that, people had to carry travellers' cheques for the whole of their trip. R and I were travelling for a yr in Europe and I got mugged three months into the trip. I spent one very scary night feeling like a non-person. Mind you, it all ended well except for the fright. American Express reimbursed all my travellers' cheques, and a darling Spanish photographer, who wore a velvet smoking jacket and had a waxed moustache (not quite Salvador Dali), made the most flattering passport photo I've ever had. I think he airbrushed it.

Having my purse disappear wasn't as bad--not as shocking--as being mugged. It still took a while to remember that travel insurance might reimburse me for my sunglasses and camera. Might. Maybe. Who knows with insurance companies? But I would need a police report in order to make a claim.
We made our way to the station that the guidebook said handled tourist problems. The ground floor of the building was cavernous, divided into numerous tiny cubicles separated by walls topped with glass. From where I stood at the counter, I could see many heads bent over their desks. Everyone looked busy. No one noticed me--or noticed in such a way as to respond. None of the cubicles even opened toward the counter. It wasn't clear who was responsible. A police officer walked past and ignored me.
Since I anticipated that the procuration of a police report could take some time, I wanted to get started. I stepped around the counter and called out, "Hola!" This was why I'd studied Spanish, wasn't it? So I wouldn't be tongue-tied in a Hispanic country.
The woman at the first desk looked up in surprise. Maybe I wasn't supposed to step past the counter uninvited. At the same time, I saw that the task, in which was so engrossed, was the close examination of the glossy photos in a fashion magazine. So we had one of those visual exchanges that last less than three seconds, but that readjust the climate between the participants. I let her understand that I knew she wasn't working. She waved at the chair before her desk and asked what was wrong.
That was when I realized what else had been in my purse that was stolen--my Spanish-English dictionary. I didn't know the word for stolen and would have to guess at what--to my English ear--sounded Spanish. I knew that a purse was un bolso. I said, "Mi bolso es robo."
She looked startled. I don't yet know how to form past tense. My Spanish classes didn't get that far. My purse obviously wasn't being stolen while I was sitting there. People listening to foreigners could exercise a little imagination, eh? Maybe robo wasn't the right word either. I decided to add another syllable or two. "Mi bolso es robado. Robodo. Robolo..." Gone! I showed her I was sitting there without the requisite accoutrement that often hangs off a woman's shoulder.
By then I was speaking (shouting?) loudly enough that the woman at the next cubicle had got up to come listen. She was sucking a long caramel candy on a stick. I assured both women I was not carrying a passport, credit cards--tarjetas de crédito--or money in the purse. We did learn some useful vocab in my Spanish classes. I explained that I wasn't trying to pursue justice or find the thief. I only wanted a police report for the... here I blocked big time. No idea what the word for insurance was, so I used French. It's a completely impractical notion, yet the belief still persists that Romance languages are similar. I said, "para mi assurance."
Later that evening, when I bought a new dictionary, I looked up insurance. It's seguro. No wonder no one understood.
A police officer in a bullet-proof vest had joined the group. He and the two women conferred in rapid Spanish which I couldn't follow. The woman with the caramel candy said she would help me and returned to her desk.
The woman at whose desk I was sitting seemed to feel the problem had been solved. She returned to her magazine. Then, as if she'd just remembered, she upended a fancy paper shopping bag that was on the corner of her desk. She'd been given some hand cream samples, several small tubes, maybe on her lunch break. She dabbed cream on her hands, rubbed them together and smelled them. She didn't offer to share, which was just as well. I only use unscented products. She opened a drawer in her desk where she had other hand cream samples, which she scornfully tossed in the garbage, and dropped the new tubes in the drawer.
Through the glass, I could hear the woman at the new desk slapping papers about on her desk. I could only see her head--she was still sucking on that lollipop--seemingly busy on my behalf. I wondered how she could be filling out a police report since she hadn't even asked for my name.
The police officer in the bullet-proof vest reappeared and announced he was ready. The woman with the lollipop rose briskly and came around to where I sat. She had a torn scrap of paper which she read out with laborious effort.

I appreciated the effort she'd taken to write this out. Perhaps I can't express myself as well in Spanish. I thought I could, but I realized no one had understood yet I hadn't had any money stolen. Maybe it's my accent. I have a friend who speaks Spanish and tells me I have a German accent, which doesn't make sense, but I guess my brain and my mouth get mixed up.
Certainly the woman's colleagues--the woman with the hand cream and the police officer--were very impressed as she read these words.
I asked why I had to go somewhere else. She said it was because this other police station worked with my embassy. "What embassy," I asked? "You don't know what I am. Ustedes no preguntan cuál nacionalidad soy!" So, okay, that probably isn't a sentence at all. I have no idea if pregunta, which is a noun, can even be turned into a verb à la contemporary American journalism, but I am pleased that I remembered to use the polite form of address. I wasn't a total gringa.
I nearly got the lollipop bopped on my nose. Seems I was making silly objections. This other police station dealt with all the embassies. She waved me off. Couldn't I see the officer was waiting to drive me?
He was going to drive me? I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I asked how long it would take to get there. She splayed her fingers. Two. Maybe three. "Horas?" I asked. She nodded.
It was already four o'clock. We had tickets for the opera that evening. I wasn't missing it. I'm not such an opera buff, but I really wanted to get inside the famous Palacio de Bellas Artes.
As soon as I said I had tickets to the opera, everyone's manner changed. Culture is BIG in Mexico City. The lollipop got tucked into a cheek, the fashion magazine pushed aside. The officer said I could go to the other police station tomorrow. For now he would drive me to my hotel so I could get ready for the opera. I thought he was kidding. He waved a regal arm--which was cute since he was barely as tall as I was. I said mi esposo was with me, out there on the other side of the counter. I had a very tiny concern that I might be whisked off, never to be seen again. I still couldn't quite believe a police officer was going to drive us to our hotel so I could get ready for the opera.
In the street there was a formal changing of the guards kind of maneuver between my cop and the one waiting in the car who had to leave his front seat and get in the back behind my seat, so that R and I were as far as possible from each other. I reached for my seat belt--good Canuck that I am--and only when I tried to click it in place did I realize there was a submachine gun between the seats. I didn't know what to do with my seat belt and stupidly held it at my hip. The officer driving didn't wear his.
By then it was rush hour--though it might be rush hour all day long in Mexico City; I'm not sure when it ever abates--and the officer pulled some deft U-turns and tapped his horn to bypass vehicles. He asked which opera we were going to see. He asked what time it began. He didn't know I was only going to change my Tshirt and brush my hair, and then we were going to walk the half-hour stretch to the Palacio. Grab a cheap meal along the way.
Usually, when we arrived at the hotel there was a doorman or a bartender out front with a ready smile, but this time, when we showed up in a police car, everyone ignored us. If they had any curiosity, it was kept well hidden.
When I got out of the car, the police officer told me that it didn't matter if I went to the other police station. The thief had escaped. I would never get my purse back. Since I still didn't have the right word to explain about needing a police report for insurance purposes, no one had understood yet why I so particularly wanted to file a report. And now, in retrospect, dealing with the insurance company, I'm wondering myself.
But we did go the next day. The office of the policeman, who'd been assigned to deal with tourists, was only large enough for his desk and two chairs. I don't think it was a promotion. I don't think he was happy. He listened to my simplistic Spanish with no expression. When I finished he said--in very good English--that he needed two copies of my passport. I made to give him my passport and he reared back his head. "Aren't you going to make copies?" I asked. "No." I asked him where I should make copies.
When I returned with the copies of my passport, he placed the keyboard in front of me, twisted the screen to face me and told me to fill in the form. I guess he didn't want to have to be typing all kinds of foreign names, though he watched the screen closely and told me whenever I missed a slot. Then he took the keyboard and typed for a long time. I'm not sure sure to what purpose since, on the papers he gave me, there are only three sentences.
With great solemnity he said, "I am going to certificate this for you without charge."
Oh. I hadn't realized I was going to have to pay anything.
"If you pay," he explained, "you will have to go to another place and wait three hours and then come back to show me the proof that you paid."
So that was what took so long--waiting to pay. And now it was almost eleven, and this man wanted to have his lunch on time without having to wait for a tourist to return with papers he was going to have to certificate.
"Thank you," I said. I wondered how much it would have cost--just wondering, not because I wanted to contribute to the coffers of Mexico City. But I didn't ask because he looked like a man who could easily change his mind, and not to my benefit.

Of course, I had to go the market to buy myself a new cheap bag for my hair clips, my lip balm, my kleenex, a new notebook. Though I have to admit I didn't write much for the rest of our stay.

I wake your cousin who sleeps on a chair in the bathtub

R stepped into my room the other day, saw the pages I was working on, and commented with surprise that I'd started writing poetry.

Poetry??? To write poetry one has to know about melopoeia, quatrains, sestinas, hovering accents... I have a hard enough time with accents I can see and still don't know how to pronounce. I want to fêter a birthday and have no idea whether I'm telling another friend that we're having a fête, a fète, or a féte. They're all pronounced differently, but my ear doesn't hear it. So how would I handle a hovering accent? Not to mention that a poet has to be graced with an acrobatic tongue and a wildly juxtaposing imagination that sees the world in a grain of sand.

I have a great love of language but I know my limitations. I'm not a poet.

Nah, what R saw was my attempt to amuse myself by concocting sentences to test my grasp of Spanish. By sentences I mean simple declarative statements. I've accumulated a meager heap of vocabulary--city buildings, furniture, vegetables, occupations, family relationships. (I still can't believe we spent a whole 3-hr class on nephews, uncles, grandmothers, fathers-in-law, cousins. I'm not marrying into a Spanish family; I'm just trying to speak the language.) We've learned verbs, though there are so many irregular ones--lists upon lists of them--that we haven't yet progressed into past tense. I'm fixated on prepositions: beside, above, in front, near, around, below, on top, under, behind, inside, between... I move my mug of tea to one side of my desk, then another. My pen is no longer beside the mug but behind it. I practice saying where it is. I move my mug again. This could make me a candidate for psychological testing, but seriously, I'm only trying to learn a language.

I've heard that Spanish is an easy language to learn because you sound out exactly what you see written--unlike French where I dare you to have a go at débarbouillette (which you might think is an uncommon word that nobody sane would ever need to know how to say, but I used it at least once every time I went to work for 30 yrs). So that's fine: in Spanish you write exactly what you hear, and you hear exactly how a word is written. The problem is: what do you hear? Your ear can't decipher it yet. And as for saying... even once you learn that j's are pronounced like h's and v's are pronounced like b's, your mouth isn't accustomed to making those sounds when you see those letters. I'm not even going to mention the torture of r's and double rr's. Learning Spanish demands a new relationship with your tongue.    

However, I'm game because one day I want to go to a Spanish-speaking country again and I'd like to have a go at communicating. It's boring to memorize words and lists of verbs, so I'm trying to write sentences that practice what I know how to say. I can't help if what I know how to say in Spanish doesn't make much of a story yet.

to be or not to be / shakespeare in spanish class

In my Spanish class we are now attempting to learn when to use the verbs "ser" and "estar", both of which translate as "to be".

In English, we only have one verb, "to be". I am Canadian, you are thin, he is fashionable, she is exhausted, we are firemen, the cups are on the table. It's all "to be".

Spanish has two forms of "to be", which are used in different circumstances: defining location, inherent physical characteristics, transient states of being, psychology, identification of nationality or profession, idiomatic expressions, etc. It's not one of those half-empty/half-full conundrums where you say POtato and I say poTAto. The wrong "is" in Spanish is just plain wrong. A mistake.

So one student, who likes to lighten the mood in the class, asks the teacher how she would translate "To be or not to be"? The teacher isn't sure. The class begins discussing whether the question is about a state of being or something else. Although the student who asked the question is a Francophone, he said, "To be or not to be" in English. The teacher speaks only minimal English. She asks what the line is in French. "Être, ou ne pas être." That doesn't help her, since French, too, only uses one verb for "to be". (Why is it that everyone claims Spanish is the easiest language to learn and here we have two forms of the most common verb, where other languages only have one?)

A bumbling semantic discussion ensues. We don't yet understand how to differentiate between the verbs "ser" and "estar", and the teacher isn't sure about the greater context of the line. She clearly doesn't spend her evenings reading Shakespeare in translation. Up until a certain point in the discussion, the name Shakespeare isn't even mentioned. When it is, a genteel, older woman says Shakespeare took the line from French. No, he didn't, I say. He wrote it. She shakes her head. It comes from French. From where, I ask? She doesn't know, but some of the other students wonder too now. They know Shakespeare made the line popular, but was it his? I insist that it was first written in English by William Shakespeare.

This all goes back to a deep-seated French conviction that all things beautiful and expressive are évidemment French. Anglos are clumsy louts who don't know how to dress or enjoy themselves, and speak a bastardized, predominantly practical, flat-footed language. Any of you who are English writers living in a French milieu will at some point have met a French speaker, who may or may not be a writer, but will still affirm with great aplomb that French is the more beautiful language with all the poetry.

Back to the Spanish class: the to-be-or-not-to-be question was never resolved by us. I've just looked it up. Umpteen translations available, but each begins, "Ser, o no ser..."

The woman who'd said the line was taken from French never admitted that I was right. She shrugged and said, En tout cas... which is the well-bred version of Whatever.

I didn't dress R up in costume to pose for this pictures. It's Edwin Booth acting Hamlet in 1870.

update on spanish

Yay! I have found another Spanish course and have had the second class now. I am learning more Spanish than I knew a month ago, though I'm still a long way away (years?) from not needing subtitles on a movie. In addition to vocab and exercises, the teacher gives us simple grammar explanations. It's all very awkward and bumbling, but hey. Hoy no hay llubia. Yo soy, tu eres, el es. Perra isn't pronounced the same way as pera. Don't make a mistake or you might buy a dog about to have a litter instead of a pear.

  The photo is a detail from the cathedral in Taxco, Mexico.

learning spanish a, b, c (or is that th?)

The teacher began by saying that she was our jefe--our chief. We were to listen and follow her like Jesus Christ. She swept her hand behind her hips in case we didn't understand.

Okay, she was joking. Maybe. Her tone was a little too weary. Heavy on the subtext. She knew everything and we knew nothing.

I'd enrolled in a Spanish course because I thought it would be fun. Maybe R and I will go to Mexico again one day and I won't have to use body language to convince the fruit seller that yes, indeed, this white girl wants chili on her chopped watermelon. Pointing at the chili that he's warning me is picante and bobbing my head. If I spoke a bit of Spanish I could ask for two tickets to get on the subway instead of having to hold up my fingers and not understanding how two digits equal ten tickets and no change.

I haven't sat in a classroom for many years. Last time I did, I was an A student. I don't believe I've turned stupid in the meantime, but boy, oh boy, I wasn't following what that teacher was saying. I felt I wanted--needed--a few explanations. My brain doesn't learn language by mouthing sounds without knowing what the sounds mean. The teacher, however, hadn't allotted time for explanations. Or perhaps explanations didn't belong to her pedagogical method. We hadn't yet learned more than a few words of Spanish but we were supposed to... generate understanding ourselves?

The teacher flapped her hand in the air. Just listen and repeat. Eventually our mouths would be able to produce those sounds in given situations that might be appropriate. For example, a stranger accosts you. You say, "Como se escribe tu apellido?" because that's what you've been taught to parrot when you meet someone new. But this new person might be a policeman not interested in spelling his family name for you.

I'm more interested in the component parts of a sentence than learning how to repeat a whole sentence by rote. If I know what the individual words mean, then I'll be able to make new sentences on my own--which I would prefer to predigested ones. (And I'm not just arguing for the sake of arguing. Anyone who speaks French already can figure out how that question about spelling your name breaks down into parts. But I'm assuming that more complicated sentences were going to come.)

In defense of the teacher's method, there were some students who seemed to understand immediately. She would ask, De acuerto? And they would chirrup, Si! Si! Though maybe they already spoke a bit of Spanish.

When we learned the alfabeto, she said that C was pronounced "ce" like the English word sea. Later she asked us our names and gave us the Spanish equivalents, which she wrote on the board. Mine was Alicia, which she pronounced as Alithia. Hold it, I put up my hand. Hadn't she just told us that C is "ce"? Why was she saying Alithia? She rolled her eyes and told me that I was being complicated. But no, I said. Either you're telling us it's "ce" or it's "th".

Of course, I know that Spanish from Spain doesn't sound the same as Spanish from Central or South America. I've watched enough movies. Films from Spain are soft with th's. I wanted the teacher to say this. I also wanted her to be consistent. However Spanish is spoken elsewhere, within the walls of this classroom could we decide to pronounce C as "ce" or "th"?

She shook her head. She was leaving it up to us how we wanted to pronounce our C's. Consistency in the classroom was not a priority.

Next milestone was the letter V, which is pronounced "v" in some countries and "b" in others. So, fine, I get it. As above.

But: people who speak English don't (as a rule) mix their Texan twang with Newfoundland idiom. So... could the teacher please tell us how pronouncing C as "th" or "ce" aligned with pronouncing V as "b" or "v"? So that, when I open my mouth on some future trip to Mexico, I won't sound schizophrenic?

I don't think the teacher appreciated my presence in the class. She wanted us to speak up, but not the way I was speaking up.

We finished with the alfabeto and learning how to spell our names in Spanish. Or if not finished, we let it drop.

Next she asked us about our origen, which is pronounced orihen. After the teacher had pointed at several people who all said they were from Montreal, I put up my hand and asked if origen referred to where we lived now or where we hailed from. The teacher rolled her eyes and muttered something about this being a beginners' Spanish class, not semantica. She pointed at another student who claimed that he, too, had originated in Montreal. Except for three or four students, the whole class came from Montreal! That's statistically amazing, especially given the various hues of skin.

I learned some Spanish, yes. But I left the class with a headache and no desire to return. There are many institutions of learning in Montreal. Four universities and several colleges. Language schools too. I'll find another Spanish course. I expect the teacher won't miss me.