If I may digress for a moment and do a quick comparison of Spanish and Korean...
There are several students at the school from Korea, and there's even a Korean restaurnt in town. I lived in Korea for 2 years (from 1990 to 1992) and somehow managed to learn enough korean to speak with relative efficiency, but certainly not fluency. It was a great time and maybe the subject of another blog (or not).
However, as I'm sitting in class... or eating dinner with my house mom... or shopping in the stores... or asking directions... or doing my homework... etc...
I can't help but think back to my first week in Korea. I had already "studied" Korean at the MTC for 8ish weeks and yet I couldn't understand squat - let alone make any sort of meaningful contribution to conversations. I still rememeber (as a missionary) sitting in a house while "we" were teaching a Korean college student. I was lost beyond belief as the discussion unfolded around me and equally bored because I could do nothing but pray for the best from our visit. I think I might have said "I'm from New York and I have 5 people in my family." That experience happend over and over for the first few months. I learned that language "poco a poco" and enventually could hold me own.
Anyhow, after one week I'm able to carry on conversations and even tell stories to my teacher about life in America, my experiences walking around the city, even my unexpected nuptials. Heck, we occasionally even talk about politics and ecoconomics in class. I think that I'm able to speak Spanish about as well as I could after being IN Korea for 3-4 months. The difference is incredible.
I'm missing all sorts of tences, and I have to look up some pretty obvious words, but I can carry on without being completely flustered and stopped at every corner. It's really cool!
On the other hand, I have noticed that I'm not terribly talkative with people in Spanish because I don't have a "topic" to make me talk. I am very adept at travelling in countries where I don't speak the language and so I've learned to survive very easily without language. I'm trying to talk more, but even so... The advantage I had in Korea of having the assignments of a missionary to push me to talk and practice are aspects of this experinece that I'm having to substitute.
Plus, In Korea - I had but one person with whom I could speak english - Elder Kirk Niceler. Here in Antigua, there are english speakers everywhere (from all over the globe: Holland, Sweeden, Montreal, Chicago, Philladelphia, California, etc...).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I went through a similar experience on my mission in California where I could speak Spanish as much or as little as I wanted. I found that by reading a well-known book in Spanish it really increased my understanding. Mine was The Book of Moromon. Also, 501 Spanish verbs was the greatest book for explaining tenses of verbs.
Post a Comment