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Well we only have five weeks left for this trimester! It's gone by so fast and we are learning a lot of Spanish! We have decided though that one trimester just isn't enough so we are planning on coming back to Costa Rica in January for another few months of learning Spanish! The Lord, in His faithfulness, has provided most of the funding we will need for next trimester so hopefully we can squeeze through on a tight budget next tri and learn some more Spanish! There are many tenses in the Spanish language and so far this trimester we are only learning present tense so we will need to come back if we ever want to be able to say what happened to us yesterday or what we are going to do in the future and other such things:)
So far though, we have been learning many verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and phrases. We are really seeing the differences between english and spanish and how languages can be really strange sometimes! Last week we learned all the nouns for family members. I am so glad that in Spanish they differentiate between what kind of in-law you are. If it's your spouse's sister, they are called a cuñada but if it's your spouse's brother's wife, they are called a concuña because they aren't related to you by blood like your spouse's siblings are.
In Spanish, there are many differences to remember. First, ever noun is either masculine or feminine and when you put an adjective with the noun, it needs to also become masculine or feminine depending on what the noun is. And then, if the word is plural, the adjective has to be plural too. This is one thing that we don't have in english. Also, there is more than one "you" to learn in Spanish. In english, when you are talking to one other person, it's always "you". In Spanish though, there is you, "tú" which is an informal way of talking to someone. They use this all the time in Mexico and other countries but in Costa Rica, they don't use"tú" because to them that isn't respectful and it's too informal. Instead, they say "usted" when saying you. But, here's the thing, at our school there are missionaries going to many different countries so we have to learn to use both tú and usted. And then, the other hard thing is that there are so many different endings to verbs depending on who you are talking about. In english, when we are talking about the verb to run, for example, we say, I run, you run, he runs, she runs, we run, you guys run, they run. This is how most of our verbs go. The verb doesn't change very much, you just add an s when you are saying he or she. In Spanish though, it's completely different. Every subject has a different ending and it depends if the verb ends in -ar, -er, or -ir as to what ending goes on the verb. So, for example, the verb to run is "correr". When you conjugate it, which is what we did with the verb to run in english above, it goes like this: Yo corro (I run), tú corres (you run, informal), usted corre (you run, formal), el corre (he runs), ella corre (she runs), nosotros corremos (we run), ustedes corren (you guys run), and ellos corren (they run, a group of guys or girls and guys together), ellas corren (they, a group of girls run). There is so much more to say and to remember. It takes a while to remember everything and have it become habit.
That's just the beginning too! This week we learned how they say things like this, "I buy a cup of coffee for Patrick" It goes like this in spanish: I, for him, buy a cup of coffee, to Patrick. And then, if I want to say, I buy it for him., it goes like this: I for him it buy. The order of everything is switched when you use certain words and it can get confusing!
Man, that was a long and I'm sure boring explanation but that is just a little bit of what we have to think about every day! Learning another language is hard! We are having a great time though and are really picking it up fast. Thank you Lord for the opportunity! We hope to use this new language for your glory someday soon as missionaries!
- comments
Kate Orndorff Oh and that picture at the top right is all the lovely ladies in my class! :)
Elaine I love this post! I may steal a lot of this information for my blog. I'm sure it's interesting for others to know what this is like for us daily! Thanks for sharing