Sunday, April 12, 2009

Question of understanding...

11 April 2009

Bouteflika is our president for the third time.
I guess, it is a reason to laugh for, remembering my last article in which I put his pictures.
My days are still going on same way. I am trying to get ready for the cooking exam by preparing some recipes at home as much as I can.
In my Spanish class, I am preparing a small exposition about aggressiveness.
The inspiration isn’t coming to my mind these days and I wish that it won’t be the case when I’ll be taking the DELE exam next month.

In my last articles, which I wrote in Spanish and made my friend Phil translate them to understand what I was talking about, I mentioned many times my first love. Something that makes me think deeply and seriously in the kind of life I am having now without him.

I strongly believe that falling in love isn’t a mistake, but living with its marks is.
Many people think that if I wasn’t a hotel manager, I would surely be an architect or a psychologist.
And I won’t hide from you that the second one is quit interesting for the idealist one I am.
In my last article, I introduced this subject talking about my friend who divorced and is already living a new love story, something that my mind can hardly understand and I assure you that it is not because of the lack of my intelligence but because it is weird.
I thought of stopping the publication of articles, as I can hardly make people understand the right way what I really want to say.
Same misunderstanding happens to me with my teachers of Spanish.
I guess that speaking a different language is not the problem, but translating the ideas from one culture to another one usually take us directly into deep conflicts that we aren’t looking for.
The last comment that my teacher of Spanish, José, made during the class was:”if you want to speak Spanish, you got to study it, go to Spain, fall in love with Spanish, and marry him to finish having Spanish children. At that time you can say that you are finally able to speak it just like me”
I smiled at him words and remembered one of the emails that my friend Phil sent me few months ago, in which he told me about someone he knew there who learnt very well English to understand the lady he was married to.

With the same smile, an intern voice inside me said:”ok Zahra, at least you are sure of learning Turkish very well in the coming 5years”

1 comment:

Phil Marx said...

Language is a form of expression, and this expression is almost meaningless without passion. That is why marriage induces the learning so well. But even though the classroom evironment is too sterile to adequately accomplish this alone, I don't think you necessarily need to marry someone to learn a language well.

All you really need to do is learn a few provocative phrases beginning with "Your Mother..." or "Your country..." Then, go to a public place and start throwing about these words at strangers. I am sure you will quickly learn all the idioms and other nuanced parts of the language from their responses.

And the beauty of it is that this works in any language, not just Spanish. :)