Impossible Dream – subjunctive mood

Just your average 68-year-old college freshman studying abroad.


It is with the last ounce of courage and an unbearable sorry that I subject you to “El Sueno Imposible.” Forgive me, but I hope to make a point.

Spanish is a language wrapped in the subjunctive. Without limiting yourself much, you can speak English for days and get by without using the subjunctive mood. But not Spanish.

The subjunctive is used to express what’s happening in the speaker’s mind — how he or she feels about something — not necessarily what’s real and true. Unlike German or Cantonese, two perfectly wonderful languages which sound like they don’t care about your dreams, Spanish has a wistful lilt. I grew up believing that Ricardo Montalban honestly did want me to have that pony.

We need to remember, though, that Spanish was used to enslave much of the indigenous world. “I wish we had more gold.” Isabella said to Ferdinand. Subjunctive and cold-blooded at the same time.

This, my friends, is a language worth studying.fingerprint4-only-final-40px

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Three Stooges – language


Just your average 69-year-old college freshman studying abroad.

The scientific community thinks our larynx dropped into its spot above our trachea around 100,000 years ago.

Our necks stretched to make room for our vocal tracts. We developed control over our breathing. Our tongues grew pliable and our lips learned to shape sounds.

We wandered in small bands and came up with thousands of languages. They help shape how we see the world. What does it mean, you might ask, if a tribe can’t express a future tense — what about supper?

We talk, schmooze, gossip and interface at two to four words a second and we do it on the fly, without thinking. That makes our gift treacherous. James 3:8 refers to the sins of speech as “deadly poison.” The serpent used beautiful words.

Maybe the most remarkable thing is that language exists in the first place, that we’re able to talk — even if we don’t always do it well.

When I sit down at a restaurant here, they pretend to understand what I’m ordering and I pretend that what comes out is exactly what I had in mind.

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Gender Change in Spanish

Just your average 68-year-old college freshman studying abroad.

The men are men, the women are women. But in Spanish-speaking countries inanimate objects can go either way.

Every noun — a tool, a spice, a piece of wrapping paper — has a gender. Adjectives and articles have to agree. El, la, los, las.

Things you would assume are masculine or feminine often aren’t. The Spanish word for sausage, a phallus they shove into a bun, is feminine. The bun that it penetrates is masculine.

Stylish sling-back heels are referred as “los zappatos” (masculine). Rugged shit-kicker boots as “las botas” (feminine). A woman’s dress gets a masculine noun and is kept in the closet.

We think of meat and potatoes as a guy thing but in Spanish they are as feminine as Shakira.

Nobody can quite explain why or how but everyday, as the day turns into night, its gender changes from masculine to feminine. The nights in Barcelona can be dazzling.fingerprint4-only-final-40px

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Spanish Alphabet Song – Baby

Just your average 68-year-old college freshman.

The crow’s feet will still be there and you’ll have to come to terms with those jowls and wattles. But people like you are not interested in the shallow cosmetics of youth.

Our search is for a more profound renewal, an intellectual and spiritual innocence. And the key to finding it is within all of us. We can know the promise of youth in its full glory only through total and abject ignorance.

Here how it works. When you can’t begin to understand what a professor is saying, when you can’t process a string of syllables into recognizable sounds or articulate even the simplest thought, your mind curls into the fetal position.fingerprint4-only-final-40px

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Darwin galapagos lizard

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Everywhere you turn you see Charles Darwin around here.

It was sweet while it lasted but we don’t live on the Galapagos anymore. We’re not isolated from all those people who want to do “our” jobs for lower pay. We’ll need to “adapt” as the great naturalist might say. That includes paying for education.

Money saved by going to a two-year community college can pay for the last two years at a university. Instate tuition can save another $20,000 to $60,000 which can help pay for grad school (where, experts say, top-tier programs at elite institutions are most likely to pay off) or pay down student loans.

A woman in my class moved here to live with her grandfather and go to community college. It was a survival-of-the-fittest decision. She plans to major in oceanography. I suspect she and Darwin will run into each other again in the waters off the coast of Ecuador.

 

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