Argentina, Part 2: "Uhhh... ¿como se dice 'asynchronous callback function'? "
In my previous post, I mention taking a taxi from the airport to my hostel. As the taxi pulled out from the airport, I was feeling pretty good about my level of Spanish ability. After all, I'd managed to change currency, clear customs, get my bags, and get a taxi, all entirely in Spanish! As the taxi began to enter traffic, I remember thinking to myself something along the lines of: "Hey, I remember more Spanish than I thought! I can do this, no problem."
About two seconds after having this particular musing, my taxi driver started trying to initiate conversation, and I learned rather abruptly exactly how much the Central American Spanish I learned in high school differs from Argentine Spanish. The accent here is incredibly thick, and there are many different words used, even major ones like pronouns. Instead of "tu" for an informal pronoun, they use "vos". Any "ll" is pronounced somewhere between "sh" and "zh" and a hard "j". Sibilants are extremely soft (not quite a lisp as heard in Spain, but close), and frequently the last phonetic chunk of words are dropped entirely. Of course, everybody here speaks at about a hundred miles per minute. All of this makes listening comprehension kind of difficult, especially over (for example) cell phones or in loud bars or clubs.
On top of all of that, even when I can clearly hear what people are saying, that's no guarantee that I'll understand a damn word. Let's talk about all that Spanish we all took in high school. Remember all the insipid little skits we had to act out about ordering different kinds of drinks, and so on? Yeah. All that. I think I learned about five different words for "soda", since the textbook couldn't include any alcoholic drinks1. Well, allow me to present a few words and phrases that they didn't teach us, all of which came up multiple times within my first 24 hours in Argentina.
Now, with the exception of the last two items, all of these are relatively easily dealt with; the problem is that they are pretty basic, everyday use phrases. I can recall all sorts of completely useless hours spent learning how to describe different kinds of movies ("horror", "ficciones de ciencias", etc.), none spent learning how to offer to share a bottle of wine.
Another language-related problem I've encountered is that, in addition to hanging out around bars and hostels, I spend a lot of time hanging out with programmers and bureaucrats at hospitals and ministries of health. Let me tell you three more areas that my high-school Spanish didn't cover: programming, medicine, and politics. Yeah, good luck trying to discuss object-oriented programming, or the relative merits of different Linux distributions, or various epidemiological concepts.
Technical vocabulary here is a bizarre mix of English words, Spanish-ified English words ("basé de data" for "database", "historia medico electrónico" for "electronic health record", etc.), and then completely different words (for example, "graphical user interface" is something entirely different--- so different, in fact, that I've completely forgotten it). Similarly difficult is describing the US health care system--- partially because it is absurdly complex and counter-intuitive, and partially because we didn't learn words like "reimburse" or "deductible" back in high school, and the authors of my dictionary didn't seem to think they were all that important.
The upshot of my complete and total lack of a technical vocabulary is that I spend a lot of time sounding like a five-year-old while trying to discuss difficult concepts. Thus far, I've managed to communicate reasonably well, but it can get kind of frustrating at times. I imagine that this will improve with time, though. Already, in the week that I've been here, my Spanish listening comprehension has improved significantly, as has my spoken Spanish.
1: Of course, in reality, alcoholic drinks would have been far more useful for me to have learned words for in high school. While plenty of people drink soda, they simply call it "Coka" or "Coke". Alcoholic drinks, however, have all sorts of strange and interesting nomenclatures, which can result in hilarious mishaps involving rum.
2: Actually, from what I've observed thus far about people's views on sex down here, a slap in the face is a relatively unlikely outcome. Argentine society seems pretty up-front and comfortable about sex, or at least far more so than the US. A far more likely outcome is some minor embarrassment on my part, and major amusement on the part of everybody within earshot.
About two seconds after having this particular musing, my taxi driver started trying to initiate conversation, and I learned rather abruptly exactly how much the Central American Spanish I learned in high school differs from Argentine Spanish. The accent here is incredibly thick, and there are many different words used, even major ones like pronouns. Instead of "tu" for an informal pronoun, they use "vos". Any "ll" is pronounced somewhere between "sh" and "zh" and a hard "j". Sibilants are extremely soft (not quite a lisp as heard in Spain, but close), and frequently the last phonetic chunk of words are dropped entirely. Of course, everybody here speaks at about a hundred miles per minute. All of this makes listening comprehension kind of difficult, especially over (for example) cell phones or in loud bars or clubs.
On top of all of that, even when I can clearly hear what people are saying, that's no guarantee that I'll understand a damn word. Let's talk about all that Spanish we all took in high school. Remember all the insipid little skits we had to act out about ordering different kinds of drinks, and so on? Yeah. All that. I think I learned about five different words for "soda", since the textbook couldn't include any alcoholic drinks1. Well, allow me to present a few words and phrases that they didn't teach us, all of which came up multiple times within my first 24 hours in Argentina.
- "Join"; as in "May I join you?" Actually, my dictionary lists several different words for "join", but I'm kind of afraid to use any of them--- it seems quite likely that at least one of them actually means something that could earn me a slap in the face2.
- "Fork", "Spoon", "Napkin", etc. As in "May I have a fork, please?"
- Various cuts of beef. "Lomo"? "Asada"? "Cogote"? Apparently, in Argentina, you don't just order a steak, you order an anatomy lesson. More on this later. Admittedly, this is somewhat Argentina-specific, but it's incredibly disconcerting to look at a menu and not know what a single thing on it is.
- "Waiter". The aforementioned insipid skits made a major point of teaching us that the word for "waiter" was "camarero". This is not, in fact, the case (at least in Argentina). Apparently, the word for "waiter" is "mozo" or "moza", and if you use "camarero", it is simultaneously confusing and insulting to all involved parties.
- "Medical Informatics". As in "I am a medical informatics graduate student", in response to "¿Que haces para trabajar?" I've actually built up a little spiel describing what I'm doing in Argentina; I'm not sure quite how well it works--- it's possible that a good chunk of Buenos Aires now thinks I'm a medical student or something. But at least I'm no longer flailing about trying to remember the word for "research" ("investigación"). Also, there isn't really an easy way to say "graduate student" or "graduate school", since the educational system here is quite different from ours. I usually have to go about explaining it as more school following University, but I'm pretty sure there's a better way to handle that.
- "Electoral College". Yeah. Try explaining the bizarre inner workings of our confusing political system in horribly broken Spanish. It was apparently hilarious to those around me; hopefully, they were laughing at how crazy our system is, not how bad my explanation was (Yeah, right, and I'm a water buffalo-- ed.).
Now, with the exception of the last two items, all of these are relatively easily dealt with; the problem is that they are pretty basic, everyday use phrases. I can recall all sorts of completely useless hours spent learning how to describe different kinds of movies ("horror", "ficciones de ciencias", etc.), none spent learning how to offer to share a bottle of wine.
Another language-related problem I've encountered is that, in addition to hanging out around bars and hostels, I spend a lot of time hanging out with programmers and bureaucrats at hospitals and ministries of health. Let me tell you three more areas that my high-school Spanish didn't cover: programming, medicine, and politics. Yeah, good luck trying to discuss object-oriented programming, or the relative merits of different Linux distributions, or various epidemiological concepts.
Technical vocabulary here is a bizarre mix of English words, Spanish-ified English words ("basé de data" for "database", "historia medico electrónico" for "electronic health record", etc.), and then completely different words (for example, "graphical user interface" is something entirely different--- so different, in fact, that I've completely forgotten it). Similarly difficult is describing the US health care system--- partially because it is absurdly complex and counter-intuitive, and partially because we didn't learn words like "reimburse" or "deductible" back in high school, and the authors of my dictionary didn't seem to think they were all that important.
The upshot of my complete and total lack of a technical vocabulary is that I spend a lot of time sounding like a five-year-old while trying to discuss difficult concepts. Thus far, I've managed to communicate reasonably well, but it can get kind of frustrating at times. I imagine that this will improve with time, though. Already, in the week that I've been here, my Spanish listening comprehension has improved significantly, as has my spoken Spanish.
1: Of course, in reality, alcoholic drinks would have been far more useful for me to have learned words for in high school. While plenty of people drink soda, they simply call it "Coka" or "Coke". Alcoholic drinks, however, have all sorts of strange and interesting nomenclatures, which can result in hilarious mishaps involving rum.
2: Actually, from what I've observed thus far about people's views on sex down here, a slap in the face is a relatively unlikely outcome. Argentine society seems pretty up-front and comfortable about sex, or at least far more so than the US. A far more likely outcome is some minor embarrassment on my part, and major amusement on the part of everybody within earshot.
posted by steve | 5:30 PM
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