Categories
notes

Bringing Up Baby Bilingual in English, Spanish, and Rubbish

A common question Marina and I are asked, as a Spanish-British couple, is ‘What language do you speak to each other?’

The answer is that we absolutely interchangeably speak English, Spanish, and rubbish.

Let me explain: We are both very good at each other’s language, so we can easily talk to each other in English, or Spanish, and communicate perfectly. I would say we speak a touch more Spanish, but it really depends on factors like how tired one of us is (I always defaults to my own language when I’m tired)…

The problem is that our easy interchange between English and Spanish doesn’t just happen on a daily basis. It doesn’t just happen on an hourly basis…

It often happens on a sentence to sentence basis, or worse, a word to word basis!

For example:

Marina to Ben: You look exhausted, qué te pasa love?
Ben to Marina: Nothing, I’m just feeling a bit agobiado…

Oh dear. You see the thing is, in sentences like this we’ll change languages when a single word or phrase works better in one language than another. Qué te pasa just works better than ‘what’s going on’ for Marina in the above example, and in the case of my reply, I use the word agobiado becuase it does a one-word job that English doesn’t have to explain a general feeling of stress/anxiety/over-work/too much on my shoulders.

And Marina understands what I mean perfectly, just as I understood her! Why speak in one language at a time, after all, when we have all the wonderful lexical tools of two at our disposal? We have a reached perfect, hybrid-bilingual communication at a sentence to sentence, word to word level.

Here´s the problem. Well two problems really.

Problem one, things get worse. Our hybrid-bilingual model quickly gets out of control. Let’s take my sentence from the above example again, and look at another version, that is almost more likely to be used these days:

Ben to Marina: Nothing, I’m just feeling a bit agobiated…

AgobIATED! Spanglish at it’s best! Yet it just sounds right, and I know that Marina knows exactly what I’m talking about, even if I am effectivily speaking the third language of rubbish!

But here’s the biggest problem of all: We are trying to bring up our baby to be bilingual. What chance has he got with words like ‘agobiated’ flying around the house?

Time to ditch the private language I think, and stick to those good old staples of English and Spanish, and preferably just one at a time!

Categories
notes

Updates: La Presidencia and NIS Forest

First of all, STILL not official confirmation of whether Marina has indeed been landed with the worst job in Spain, and is in fact ‘La Nueva Presidenta de la Comunidad’!

We are avoiding bringing up the matter with the porter, who is bound to know, working on the assumption that what you haven’t been told in person, might still not be true!

Secondly, some of you know about the ‘Notes in Spanish Forest’, 120 cherry trees in Asturias bought with proceeds from the sale of our ‘Crisis Collection’ pack, over at our Spanish learning sister-site Notes in Spanish. Well, the trees have just been planted, and the charity, Fapas, has put a really nice photo-story up on their site about the big event. Do have a look.

Marina has made a Spanish video about it too, here.

Have a great weekend! – Ben

Categories
Everday life in Spain Living in Spain

The Worst Thing That Can Happen To You In Spain

You live happily in your big old flat block in the middle of Madrid for 5 years without so much as a hiccup, then all of a sudden, one day your sister-in-law overhears a bit of gossip in the building lobby that changes your life forever… something so serious that you have to pretty much immediately start looking for a new place to live… an utterly compelling reason to leave your dear, sweet home forever… without so much as a backward glance…

Not cockroaches in the bathroom, noisy neighbours, burst water pipes, or a dial-up internet connection (none of which we suffer, thank god) could be worse than this…

The catastrophic conversation overheard by my sister-in-law on the way up to our flat just minutes ago, between our porter and an elderly resident, went like this:

Old guy: “So, the new Presidenta is Marina Diez?”

Porter:”Yes, it’s just been decided in the residents meeting…” [that we avoid like the plague]

Old guy: “The girl with the baby…”

Porter: “Yes, that’s the one.”

Yes, my wife Marina has apparently been made Presidenta de la Comunidad… Marina, ‘the girl with the baby’… and the business to run… and no time to so much as stop once a day for a glass of gazpacho… handed the worst thing that can happen to you in Spain…

… the sooner we get out of here the better… our very sanity, and with it our health, is at stake. Marina has been landed with the one job no-one here in planet-Spain would beg for in a million years.

Let me explain:

The ‘comunidad‘ is the collection of people that live in this building. In our case, Marina has been nominated boss of said ‘community’ for a year and will be required to take on associated administative responsibilities.

Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? And after all, the post is changed once a year by a fair system of rotation (apparently) – everyone gets a go.

But let’s look at the facts. There are ONE HUNDRED flats in our building. The above-mentioned “collection of ordinary people” that live in them is HUGE, mostly elderly and bored, and often somewhat mad.

And when they find out who has been nominated, albeit by this fair rotational system, to be in charge of them for the coming year, they will become psychotic, oppressed, moaning whingers, who’ll be beating down our door on a daily, no, an Hourly basis with the most inane building, neighbour, lost cat, cracked basin, just-a-bit-lonely/bored and god-knows-what-else related complaints they can possibly come up with, whenever they can possibly think of an excuse to come up with them!

That’s not even considering all the trips to the bank, document signings etc Marina will have to take on and, worst of all, worse than having all these people coming to our door for a year… Marina will have to chair the dreaded “residents’ meetings”… where the great unheard flat-owning masses of our dear community are all put in one room to rant, rage and olympicly moan at the same time!

We await official confirmation… with a gathering sense of dread. If it’s true, which seems 99.99% certain, then there is only one allowable way out. To leave the building, better still, to leave town. We’ll be heading for the hills. Flat (maybe) for rent. Watch … this … space…

Categories
Life Madrid Confessions

Creativity, Building You, Being Unique…

…don’t be a version of anybody, you have to be unique in yourself, you have to be creative, unique… don’t imitate anybody… be yourself, be genuine to yourself and build yourself. – Nawal El Saadawi

I listened to the most tremendous podcast this week, an interview on the BBC’s World Book Club with Egyptian author Nawal El Saadawi.

What a fascinating woman! A doctor and writer in her late 70’s, she has some of the most refreshing, interesting views on life and creativity I’ve heard for a very long time. If you are interested in the creative process, in writing, in living, I urge you to listen to this interview. It focuses on a novel of hers called ‘Woman at Point Zero’, which I shall order at once.

Helping a friend with a research project yesterday, I was asked what I missed most about the UK (family and friends aside, of course), and I came to this conclusion: Listening to Radio 4 (and programs like this) in the car. That even more than Marmite on toast. Or Cornwall. Thank god for podcasts.

Categories
geek stuff Spanish Culture and News

Twitterando…

Twitter in Spain

Here’s a screenshot from my iPhone (my sister claims having an iPhone makes me a yuppie, I think she’s right) of all the people twittering within 25 km of me, here in Madrid, right now…

It’s a cool feature of an iPhone app called Tweetie, and just one more way to get addicted to Twitter. I can spend minutes scrolling through all this digisura…

I mean, in the above tweets we have not only information about a random stranger’s sex life, but a poem about the Rio Duero… it’s an art form, I swear… and I can’t actually tell if I’m trying to be cynical anymore. I love it, am fascinated by it, and at the same time find it absurd (in the philosophical sense… if you know what I mean).

In any case, it seems Twitter, like Facebook, has had a swift integration into Spanish online life …and whenever things are a bit quiet here on the blog, you can always find and follow me on Twitter 🙂 I promise to reveal to you … well, stuff of great interest!

Categories
notes

(Expat) Help Needed…

My friend Marielli is doing some really interesting academic work that includes research into expats living here in Spain, and could really do with a hand on a quick survey if you are:

1. US American or British
2. 18 years of age or older
3. Currently living in Spain, US or UK

As Marielli says:

“This research will require you to participate in a brief online questionnaire that will take less than 10 minutes to complete. The survey touches on the dimensions that are described extensively in the work of Geert Hofstede and Michael Minkov. They deal with key issues in national societies, known from social anthropology and cross-cultural research. By participating in this study, you will help contribute to more data in the field of cross-cultural research.”

I’ve taken the survey, it’s quick, easy to complete, so do please help if you fit the bill.

Here’s the link to the survey

Thanks! Ben

Categories
notes

Spain in trouble?

Just got home via a 2 am cab ride, streets strangely empty. The cab driver said:

“It’s the news from the government, 4 million unemployed, over 17% of the working population, people are scared… wouldn’t surprise me if we reach 5 million…”

And I think Spain might well reach 5 million unemployed, I mean, it’s not as if the construction industry (which counts one way or another for over 30% of the GNP) is going to recover in the next 5 years… and what’s going to replace it?

Spain has troubled times ahead I fear…

Categories
Spanish Food and Drink

It’s a Sin – Drinking in Spain Without Falling Over

sin alcohol - alcohol free beer

On a recent visit to Madrid my sister was amazed to see me order, drink, and actually ENJOY, a non-alcoholic beer – un sin alcohol.

“Does it actually taste nice?” she asked, adding, “I don’t think that even exists in the UK!”

I pointed out that it certainly exists, but that it’s unlikely many people would be seen dead drinking it. We ordered her one too, and her reaction went something like:

“Oh my God, it actually tastes like beer! And… it’s… really quite drinkable!” followed 5 minutes later by: “… you know, it actually feels like this beer is still going to my head a little…”

Such is the power of years of association. Beer taste = tipsy/drunk etc. On a hot day, non-alcoholic beer can still leave you feeling light-headed, but it is all, and only, in the mind.

Some sin-alcohol beers do have a trace of alcohol left (“less that 1%”), but it really is minimal. And the thing is, here in Spain, people drink it all the time without the slightest hint of shame, without for a minute thinking it might dent their macho image, or cool quota.

Personally I prefer Laiker, made by Mahou – I think it’s actually the best tasting beer in Spain!

How about you? Would you drink a ‘sin’, or would you sooner be seen dancing naked in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor?