Monday 7 September 2009

Donde es platanos?

Life is quiet, it mainly involves the unstoppable football machine that is Charlton Athletic. Inbetween each glorious victory against titans like Walsall, Hartlepool and Wycombe my feeble attempts to learn Spanish continue.

The lessons tend to be the same. I come in make some awkward conversation, she asks if I've been partying (I haven't) and then comments on how much paper I have, she should know she gave it to me. Sometimes I feel like its going well and I'm retaining all this but then I think of even if thats true I still know approximately 0.00000173% of the Spanish language.

For example, verb endings. Just like the Romanians the Spanish mess around with verb endings, call me paranoid but I'm beginning to feel tinges of conspiracy. Just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they aren't after you. In English the ends of verb change to indicate (among other things) time, talk in the past changes to talked. In Spanish its different, the verb ending changes to indicate who you are talking about. Like this:

The Spanish verb to talk, is Hablar. You knock the last two letters off and stick a new ending onto the end depending on what you are talking about.

Yo (I) hablO
Tu (You) hablAS
El/Ella (He/She) hablA
Nosotros (We) hablAMOS
Vosotros (You plural) hablAIS
Ellos (They) hablAN

With the exception of every single slight I have ever suffered, no matter however petty, I don't have a very good memory. I've been clearing out my room and my memory is being severely tested as I can't remember so much of the stuff I found. The only one I have managed to remember is why I was keeping a stone in the bottom of my wardrobe. Siobhan had brought it back for me all the way from the Norfolk seaside, I couldn't throw it away after that. So remembering all the different endings is proving a bitch. To make it worse not all verbs are the same. It won't have escaped you eagle eyes that hablar ends in ar, but other verbs end in -er and -ir and they have different endings. Though in fairness they aren't a millions miles apart. Sometimes I fluke remembering the different endings and begin to feel smug and happy with myself and then remember that once this is down that this is only one tense. Bugger.

I've been taught how to order food, very generally. Things like "I'll have the meat". Also any food that my teacher doesn't like is strictly off the menu. I also spend a lot of my time translating sentence after sentence. My room has become a Spanish bunker. There are bits of paper stuck everywhere, things like the clock, colours, prepositions, verbs, adjectives and days of the week.

lunes = monday
martes = tuesday
miercules = wednesday
jueves = thursday
viernes = friday
sabado = saturday
domingo = sunday

naranja = orange
rojo = red
azul = blue
verde = green
amarillo = yellow
purpura = purple
rosa = pink
blanco = white
negro = black (hmm)

10 days to go. 10 days until something hopefully worth reading. I hope you are all well.

love love love x

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