Learning the Language

Here's word learning in action! I imagine those in the TESOL field, or anyone who has taught or learned a second language, would appreciate this!

1. Out of the blue, while walking to school up the tiny windy dirt trail on the coast side of the main road, Jerry asked, "What does tienes mean?" How cool that he had heard it already so often in the last three days that it was rolling around in his brain! "It means, 'you have'" I responded.

2. The boy jumped from tree to rock to ground, and ran around the grassy grounds with the other kids. As a native English-speaking eight year old who has been here less than five days, he has already picked up some Spanish. "Guys, come check out this pizote!" he yells, as a coatamundi (or pizote, pronounced pee-so-tay) wanders carelessly nearby. Here's proof of how important it is to learn vocab with CONTEXT!

3. I learned in Spanish class in high school that tierra means dirt, soil, earth. Every time I heard this word, I pictured the actual brown tangible stuff in which kids like to play and worms make their home. However, I asked one of the maintenance guys at school what the metal-looking stick was that sticks out of the ground next to a power line. He explained that it's a tierra, and how it works during a lightning storm. Then I realized that he meant the stick grounds the electricity in a lightning storm.

4. What's the most difficult thing about the language here? What I have found to be tricky so far is that my Spanish doesn't yet enter into the realm of p.c. pragmatics; I don't know how to speak about special education without saying something offensive. Luckily for me, my main support person, a Tica, is patient, she speaks Spanish clearly, and she doesn't mind repeating things for me.