Kids say the foreignest things
(I thought this entry was begging for an interlinear translation.)
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Wordplay is one of my favorite things, and it’s a sheer delight when kids can participate. The other day I was in the car with my sons and I was talking (in Spanish) about rhyme with my oldest, who is five. He was coming up with pairs of rhyming words. Curiously, each one was in English. My 3½-year-old joined in the fun, proffering “House, mouse!” I realized he didn’t quite get the concept when his subsequent rhymes also had second words beginning with m: “Snowflake, mowflake!” Chalk it up to too much Dr Seuss. (Did you know you can read him in Spanish?) |
Me encanta el juego de palabras, especialmente cuando participan los niños. Hace unos días, estaba de paseo con mis hijos y estaba hablando (en español) de como funciona la rima con el grandecito que tiene cinco años. Él inventaba rimas pero, curiosamente, cada una era en inglés. El que tiene tres años y medio empezó a ayudarnos, ofreciéndonos «House, mouse!» (‘casa, ratón’). Me di cuenta de que él no entendía cuando procedió a hacer más rimas, todas las cuales contenían una m inicial en la segunda palabra: «Snowflake, mowflake!» (‘nieve, mieve’). Cúlpalo al Dr Seuss. (¿Sabes que puedes leer sus obras en español?) |
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Anyway, I asked them to think of some rhymes in Spanish. My 3½-year-old didn’t miss a beat and was very pleased with himself when he blurted, “¡Casa, ratón!” (‘house, mouse’). |
En todo caso, les pedí que pensaran en una rima en español. Inmediatamente, el que tiene tres años y medio con orgullo gritó, «¡Casa, ratón!» |
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I roared. |
Me reí a carcajadas. |
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He didn’t find it quite as funny when I countered, “House, cup!” (‘casa, taza’). |
No le pareció tan chistoso como a mí cuando yo respondí con «House, cup!» (‘casa, taza’). |
I am reminded, for no good reason (other than your mentioning Spanish and English), of the time I was with Campus Crusade in Monterrey, Mexico, attempting to share my faith with college students who, by and large, didn’t speak English. I had several years of high school Spanish and a lot of nervous energy going for me, as well as a Crusade partner who spoke zero Spanish at all. But I won’t go into the strengths or weaknesses of this particular proselytizing strategy.
As I am wont to do in English, I was trying to think of metaphors to convey my particular ideas on faith. Unfortunately, I tend to think in very convoluted sentences in English, which, when translated quickly, word-for-word, tend to show how lacking my Spanish vocabulary/grammar is.
So it was that, after being told by one student that he didn’t feel he needed to think about religion at this point, he could wait until he was older, I found myself grasping for a metaphor about trains leaving stations … let’s just say that it won’t appear in any blockbuster inspirational titles.
But, as I had learned in my very Castilian high school class, to catch (as a ball) is coger; so I attempted to use it in the English sense of catching a train.
Suffice to say that Mexican slang is nothing like Castilian, and here I was, trying to share the gospel with these guys, talking about cogiendo un trén, while they were looking at me with increasingly large eyes, wondering, “he’s doing what to a train?!”
I can only hope that, many years later, they were moved to faith by the memory of some poor fool who dared to share the gospel with them while not knowing enough Spanish to know whether he was talking about lewd acts or overstretched metaphors.
I had my own misadventures with the Spanish language and with Mexican slang while on a summer mission trip to Mexico City with Latin America Mission. I undoubtedly committed numerous gaffes while attempting to explain the Christian faith to people on the metro, but most of my red-faced moments occurred in the company of my host family.
I’d just completed one semester of introductory college Spanish, and my host family was even less capable in English, so I experienced language immersion with cement shoes on. Predictably, the false cognate embarasada (‘pregnant’) betrayed me when I depended on it to mean ‘embarrassed.’ What really amused my new friends to no end was my botching the Mexican prison slang equivalent of ‘homeboy’ or ‘blood [brother]’ (carnal); over dinner one night, I called my 12-year-old little brother carne (‘meat’).