Language and the Grand Return

I’m back in the US now. I arrived back December 14^th, to a startling lack of snow. I never really had culture shock coming to Argentina, and I haven’t had it returning. For a while I was startled by the realization that when I speak on a bus in English, anyone –everyone- can understand me. I had to start paying some attention to what I said. While on the farm, only Stephanie and I spoke English; we never had to adjust conversations for young ears, we just had to not switch into Spanish. It was almost equally startling to realize how easily I could understand strangers. Though I now speak Spanish fairly well, I always had the assumption, that when a stranger began to talk to me, I’d have to put in some effort to understand.

            As for language itself, I’ve had to check myself from putting también at the ends of sentences. That’s the only word that slips through. Whenever I want to say, “this was cool, too” or “I’ll need this, also”, I keep wanting to use “también.”

There are also a few phrases that Argentina just does better, linguistically. Sure, it’s my opinion, but 3 other English-Spanish abroad students agree with me (as did an ex-Argentinean who moved to Canada). One is the phrase “tener ganas”. It’s a way of saying you want to do something, you have a desire, a hankering to do it. Even when thinking in English, it’d often slip into my thoughts: “I don't really have ganas to rock climb today”. The other phrase is “no vale la pena”, “it’s not worth the pain.” The phrase just sounds more right, more meaningful than the English equivalent of “It’s not worth it”, or, “it’s not worth the effort”. The Spanish phrase offers a clearer vision and prediction of the situation.

-       Why won’t you date her?

-        I’m leaving in 2 weeks, it’s not worth the pain.

In this example the phrase suggests that whatever good came from the relationship, it wouldn’t outweigh the pain of breaking up, or that the wonderfulness of the relationship would make the pain of breaking up even worse. “It’s not worth the pain” seems to me to explain the why, while “it’s not worth it” seems callous and leaves you asking, but why isn’t it?

More on language

My creative writing teacher admired a few English words. Notably “hyphen” (“guíon”) and “moon” (“luna”). Moon, he thought, was perfect, because the roundness of the letters and the sound mimics the roundness of a full moon. Luna, I find, evokes the shape of a crescent moon, although I may simply be associating the two because of the crescent shaped food called medialunas. “Butterfly”, my teacher thought, was horrible. Milk fat and an insect do not draw up as pretty an image as the Spanish “mariposa”.