4/04/2009

Conjugating Verbs

I must inform you before you get too involved in this post, that if you speak no Spanish and have no real understanding of the language, this won’t make a whole lot of since to you…sorry. Well, I spent the last year and a half of my life learning Spanish. The Spanish language has like 8 billion verbs. (Just joking, I really have NO IDEA how many verbs there are, but there’s LOTS!) I spent an entire year learning how to conjugate those verbs, ar, er and ir verbs, regular and irregular verbs, present tense, past perfect tense, past imperfect tense, future tense, etc. There are 14 different tenses in the Spanish Language, and SO MANY DIFFERENT RULES when conjugating verbs into those tenses. Basically there is TONS to remember. I have spent hours upon hours trying to figure out this language, with what purpose? To be able to communicate to the people that I am trying to minister to, it was worth every minute. Where it gets complicated is, I move to Honduras, and many people here are un-educated, or have VERY little education. It is EXTREMELY common for the people here to have an entire conversation and NEVER conjugate a verb…hard to believe huh? Well it’s true. For instance a common question I hear is “Rhonda ir a la casa?” Ok, what does that mean? I give them a funny look, and they assume it’s because I don’t speak Spanish, when the reality of it is, their sentence is SOO incorrect, I don’t understand what they mean. Are they asking are you going to the house, can I got to the house, did he or she go to the house, who are we talking about here? Also, are they referring to NOW, earlier this morning, later on this afternoon? I just don’t understand. Sometimes, they’ll give the courtesy of letting me know who they’re talking about, for instance, “Rhonda tú comer el mango?” But still you just have to guess which of the 14 tenses they’re referring to. I figured when I came here I would teach the kids English, although I did not realize I would be teaching them Spanish as well. This is not a complaint at all; it’s really a blessing to have the ability to teach them this language. What a gift education is.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Girl - you are SO right! What I find is the tenses that I LOVE they don't use - tiempo compuestos - I LOVE, and they understand, but they don't use them! And only a FEW subjunctives - so that's COOL!

liz hill said...

HA!! I love this blog! :-) Next time you are back in the states I need to take a couple spanish classes from you. lol
You are a true blessing to those kids and an inspiration for us in the US to be prayerful to pursue the dreams and desires God has put in our hearts! Thank you for serving those precious kids the way you do. We here at FMI are so proud of you!!

Blessings upon you!
-Liz Hill