CategoryLanguages

and then

This morning I completed the Duolingo tree for Spanish. I had expected to receive some colorful animation, musical fanfare, or at least a badge to note the occasion. Instead a new section called “Daily Refresh” simply revealed itself. It’s fine, just as with pilgrimages and birthdays, it’s less about recognition, more about the journey. But a little celebration is also always welcome.

Anyhow, I had already planned to continue with Duolingo. I did not complete all of the sections to Legendary status on purpose, leaving about half of them to review and turn gold. There are “side quests” too — additional exercises and word matches. I’ve considered doing the reverse tree (Spanish to English), or returning to French, or taking on a related language such as Portuguese, or an entirely different one like Japanese or Mandarin.

Of course there are other ways to learn Spanish and other languages. I could focus more on Repaso Total; Clozemaster; and immersion through Dreaming Spanish, movies, music, travel, Pimsleur recordings, and online and in-person classes. To help people move in the other direction, I’d also like to complete my TESOL certification.

Yet I’m still likely to continue with Duolingo. I probably will ease up a bit, after Sunday. I currently hold first place in the Diamond League finals, so it would be great to finish there, making my own way to mark reaching the top of the Spanish tree.

Posted on by William Alba 0

three score

On my birthday, my sister Joyce wrote

So you’re 16, right?? Hope it’s a good one!

I immediately replied

Jajaja, estoy orgulloso de haber cumplido sesenta años!

…

When I was younger, birthdays felt more significant. Even half-birthdays, even though we didn’t celebrate them — I used to tell adults my age in half-years. I remember telling my mother before a party at the bowling alley that 10 felt important because I was going into double digits, and that was also around the age where I stopped declaring half-years. Bu then at 15-1/2 I got my learner’s permit, and at 16 my driver’s license. At 18 I could vote but had to register for the draft, at 19 I was legal to drink, but then they changed the age and I had to wait again until 21.

Many of the rest sort of blur together, in part because they don’t mark legal transitions. I do remember celebrating 29 together with friends, although I don’t have a strong recollection of celebrating the 30th. 35 was Dante’s age midway through life (“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita”), as well as my age when I first read Dante. I married that year. I was aware that I was old enough to be President.

40 was filled with changes, moving from Manhattan to Pittsburgh, saying goodbye to Mookie, buying our first house. However, like 35 before and 50 after, while the year was eventful, the actual birthday, not so much. The years became more important than their passage. The sweeping of the hands on a clock, not the marks where they pause.

…

Increasingly the birthdays, even the half-birthdays, have started to take legal import again. At 50 my health insurance would pay for the shingles vaccine and for a colonoscopy. At 59-1/2 I could withdraw penalty-free from my retirement accounts. At 62 I could begin Social Security as well as purchase a lifetime pass to the US National Parks. 65 is my full retirement age for Social Security and when I become eligible for Medicare. If I wait until 70 for Social Security I could receive maximum payments. At 72 I must start taking required minimum distributions from my retirement accounts.

60 is not a subject of the law, it is pure, important for its own sake. 60 is a beautiful round number, plenty of divisors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, .., just naming them is like counting the passage of time. And 60 is intimate with time: seconds in a minute, minutes in an hour, now years in a lifetime. It is an age when I do not take for granted that I can travel to other countries and walk pilgrimages, decide on a whim to go parasailing or scuba diving, sleep a good night’s sleep on a thin pad when I go camping. It is an age where I have learned so much, forgotten so much, can continue to build and learn too.

Sí estoy orgulloso de haber cumplido sesenta años.

Posted on by William Alba 1

soñar con lo que aprendo

When I was fifteen, sixteen years old I would wake up remembering dreams about things I was learning at that age. There were dreams of organic chemistry mechanisms floating through space, of driving the streets of my hometown, of speaking French. I don’t recall now if I dreamt at the time about karate, but that would surely fit the pattern.

…

This morning I woke up with a phrase in my head: respeta naturaleza. I was with a group of hikers, including some younger ones who were stomping on some mushrooms on a log, no reason, just to smash them into the rotting wood.

I thought: that’s not quite right. I should have dreamt, I should have said in my dream, respeta la naturaleza. Or if Nature is personified, perhaps respeta a Naturaleza. If I’m addressing one person formally, like the safety instruction cards on an airplane, the imperative would instead have been respete. But hold on, this was a group of hikers, so respeten. Unless I’m in Spain, and then I had to look up whether it was respetad (which is correct) or respeted — my knowledge of vosotros conjugation is lousy, I need to work on that.

…

But at least I dreamt in Spanish! It was wonderful to dream once more about something I’m learning. I’ve been wondering for a long while if this could ever happen again, whether I would ever dream in Spanish. For some months now I’ve reached other milestones. Sometimes these are delightful: during the last year when I had conversations with people around Spain and Mexico, I’ve sometimes been unable to remember later that day which language I was speaking. Other times, not so much: there have been a few occasions when I’ve wanted to say something to an English speaker and had only the words in Spanish. To lose my abilities in French while learning Spanish, whether out of disuse or the Spanish “crowding out” the French in my head, that’s one thing. But to lose my ability in English!

I asked my parents a year or so ago whether they dreams in Tagalog, Visayan, or English. (It’s strange how often we know so little about the inner lives of the people close to us.) My father said he barely remembers any of his dreams, so he couldn’t say. My mother said her childhood dreams are in Tagalog and her adult dreams are in English, even though she doesn’t remember a time when she didn’t know both languages. I asked the same question of a couple of other fluent multilingual speakers I met last summer, and they both said it depends on the situation, on the people they’re meeting in their dreams.

…

Over the past month I have been inviting dreams about a particular Spanish word: patria. This is a key word in Filipino hero José Rizal’s last poem, which he wrote in the hours before he was executed. Sometimes he capitalizes the word, at other times no. It makes its presence felt as the second word, embedded throughout the poem, and then its stark literal absence from the last stanza. But what does it mean to him in each of these instances, and what word or words would be most fitting to use in an English translation?

My friend and former student, Daniel Davis, who is an accomplished multilingual translator of technical works, suggested one resolution is to leave patria unchanged in my translation. I had already considered that for the word salud elsewhere in the poem, which I believe is acceptable because as an interjection it is already on the edge of being a loanword in English. But if I were to take this route with patria, it would be because I see it as a shifting, nebulous concept in Rizal’s own thinking, both historically and within the poem. I’m not sure if I want to leave both of these words, salud and patria, in their original forms when the causes for doing this would be such different reasons.

There is so much more I would want to write about this one word, what it seems to mean throughout the poem and how different English words don’t quite fit, but I want to finish our taxes today.

And so I find myself still hoping to dream of patria.

Posted on by William Alba 0

Dual Pilgrim

Last month I traveled to Japan. The first time I was five years old, when we flew from our home in New York to visit Manila, Dumaguete, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Honolulu, and LA. I’ve wanted to return to Japan for many many years, because I have specific childhood memories: walking the grounds of the Imperial Palace and seeing geishas made-up and dressed in kimonos; staying at the Imperial Hotel, where we watched sumo on the television while Dad received a massage; eating tempura for the first time on the recommendation of the concierge; and, unlike anywhere else we visited, being surrounded by words I could not comprehend with my eyes or ears.

On my most recent trip I tried food I’d never had before and often found myself in places where the language was beyond me. But as Heraclitus says, you can’t step in the same river twice.

During my journey to Japan, I completed the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage:

2025 1 24WILLIAM ALBA HP

When I visited the office in Tanabe on January 24, they told me I was the first person this year to be certified as a Dual Pilgrim in their office. I think most people elect to complete their journey formally at Kumano Hongu Taisha, but I was traveling west to east and my plan didn’t take me that way. I hold that I actually completed the journey on the 23rd, after visiting the three Shinto Grand Shrines, but then again what is time when crossing the International Date Line, and anyhow the process of certification can happen on a different date: a student doesn’t graduate until Commencement, even if all requirements are completed beforehand.

When I asked for my Philippine nationality to be recognized in their records in addition to the US, the clerk in Tanabe asked me which passport I had used to enter the country. Fair enough — Japanese law disallows their own citizens from holding multiple nationalities. So even though I am a dual citizen, my listing on this website as a Dual Pilgrim of the Camino de Santiago and of the Kumano Kodo shows only one nationality.

This photo links to the Dual Pilgrim website. The URL and text refer to “Willam Alba”, although the photo and certificate spell my first name correctly. Personally, I think this adds to the charm, reminding me how the person who took my picture and wrote my certificate struggled with the spelling of such a common name as mine, even though she could speak English far better than I can Japanese. There’s also something a bit poetic about it, taking the “I” out of my name, a removal of ego from the sign.

Posted on by William Alba 0

expectations

According to Duolingo, I’ve reached a high intermediate level in Spanish (CEFR B2). I do believe it’s true. The day before yesterday, when Marissa asked me to translate some attention-getting phrases for her class, I immediately saw when Google Translate had mistakenly substituted “hablar” for “decir”; knew as if it were second nature the use cases for those two verbs as well as “contar”; understood her intention to use the affirmative imperative in the second-person plural and corrected the machine translation even with an irregular conjugation; suggested an alternate second line so the lines would rhyme; and removed an unnecessary definite article from the vocative. As an example, I suggested

Alumnos, denme:
A, B, C, D, E

in place of the machine translation:

Los estudiantes me dan
cinco cuatro tres dos uno

Then yesterday at the laundromat (one of my projects this weekend is to determine which thermal fuse or solenoid needs to be replaced inside our dryer at home), I understood what other people were saying to each other in Spanish. In the afternoon, when I read the label on the bag of corn chips I bought from a Mexican grocery store, I simply read the paragraph of text in Spanish, not bothering to look at the English until afterwards, reading everything con fluidez, pausing only once at “totopos”, which I learned from context as the Mexican word for corn chips. 

…

Still, I have much to learn. For example, I believe I don’t fully understand how Spanish speakers distinguish among the meanings for “esperar”. I know it can mean “to hope” or “to wait for” or “to expect”. While these concepts are similar, they are rendered quite distinctly in English. In contrast, in Spanish, these blur one into the other.

I get that a single word can serve many functions in a language, and that often you just know which one is intended from situational or grammatical context. It just seems to me, as a native English speaker, that these three concepts are more ambiguous than they ought to be, when rendered by a single word.

…

The other day I ordered four pizzas from Domino’s, one for each of us, in whatever style we fancied. Our eldest child complained that Domino’s is not great, and their “New York style” is certainly nothing like a slice of pie you’d get at a shop in the city. I absolutely agree, there are better pizza joints in Vegas, even accounting for the general rule that pizza gets worse going from east to west in the US. But the point, I said, is to have a reasonable expectation. Don’t think of it as a pizza from New York. Just accept the food on its own terms, enjoy it for what it is.

I relearned that lesson for myself this morning. I had picked up a Too Good to Go bag from Whole Foods last night. It was my first time trying one here in the States; I had them last fall in London and in Dublin. Getting home, I was disappointed on opening the bag that they were salted caramel and plain brownies, as well as cake donuts, because at my age I avoid chocolate late at night and I much prefer yeast donuts. But after popping a sour cream donut in the air fryer for breakfast, I realized that if I think of a cake donut not as an inferior substitute for a raised donut, but simply as a kind of cake, it’s actually enjoyable. It’s cake, made even better without the usual excess of icing.

…

It’s as though I continually have to wake up to this notion, to relearn the lesson expressed by sayings such as

You get what you get, and you don’t get upset (a phrase I learned when the children were about the age of the ones Marissa now teaches)

Happiness = Reality/Expectations (I believe I first heard this expressed aloud by my friend Marc when were in college. Less commonly I’ve seen: Happiness = Reality – Expectations, but whether expressed as a ratio or difference or more complicated algebraic expression isn’t the point)

Comparison is the thief of joy (in this case, comparison not to what others have or do, but to what you wanted or expected)

This does not imply fatalism nor blind acceptance to one’s situation when seen as as a portion of the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me
the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference

…

Today I will finish reading Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals, which describes the inner peace that comes with accepting that we have mortal limitations. Being the sort of person who needs to wake up every day, I will immediately begin re-reading the book, perhaps on a regular basis.

And I will not be disappointed by how much more Spanish I want to learn. I will continue to enjoy the process in the hope, though I suppose not necessarily with the expectation, that one day I may achieve CEFR C2 proficiency.

Posted on by William Alba 1

gather ye rose-buds

En unas de mis clases de español a veces hablamos de nuestras vidas, a veces hablamos de palabrotas.

Anoche al principio nuestro maestro nos preguntó sobre cualquier chisme, es decir, las noticias en nuestras vidas. Un compañero estaba disfrutando un cono de hielo y pregunté cómo se dice la acción de comerlo. La respuesta fue “chupar” pero ahora me pregunto sobre la palabra “lamer”. Entonces mencioné que acabo de celebrar el aniversario de mis padres y hablamos de la salud de nuestros propios padres y abuelos. Después conversamos de los problemas con la memoria y de las discapacidades físicas como ser ciego, sordo y mudo. Hablando de lenguaje de señas, dije que mi hijo menor usaba un gesto que significa leche mientras diciendo “babu” (que significa “botella” en inglés). Además, mostré un gesto que quiere decir, pues, literalmente “caca de toro”.

Resulta que hay muchas maneras para decir este concepto de decir tonterías o mentiras, depende en el país. El maestro dijo que “hablar paja” es común en Latinoamérica y la palabra “paja” puede ser una palabrota, depende en el contexto. Una de nosotros mencionó que “hacer paja” es un ejemplo que significa una acción sexual con la mano.

Me pregunté sobre esto. “La paja” es comida para caballos y otros animales en una granja. Por eso, “hacer paja” en inglés literalmente puede significar to make hay.

¡Ninguno de mis compañeros angloparlantes había escuchado este dicho! Una dijo que hay una frase “to make haste” — de hecho, no me había dado cuenta de que los sonidos de “to make hay” y de “to make haste” y los significados de estas frases inglesas, los dos son muy similares. Pero “to make hay” es distinto, es una parte de la expresión completa “to make hay while the sun shines” (que significa “apurarse para aprovecharse una oportunidad”). Me gusta esta frase en español — apurarse para aprovecharse — por el sonido. 

Acabo de darme cuenta de la frase “hacer paja mientras el sol brilla” puede tener dos significados. Puede significar “apurarse para aprovecharse una oportunidad” que es neutral. Pero puede significar “tener relaciones sexuales durante el día”, es decir, ahora mismo. Y los dos significados existen en el poema de Robert Herrick “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” (“Para las virgenes, para aprovecharse el tiempo”). 

En resumen, “haz paja mientras el sol brilla” es literalmente un consejo con una metáfora botánica (“make hay while the sun shines”). Pero también puede significar algo sexual y más crudo que un poeta inglesa expresó por una metáfora botánica y hermosa (“gather ye rose-buds, while ye may”).

Un gesto en lenguaje corporal, una frase en lenguaje hablado. Cada puede ser inocente o crudo. La frontera no siempre está definida bien. Así es la vida, esta mezcla de ideas y cuerpos, encontrado en la lengua, se encuentran en la lengua.

Posted on by William Alba 0

transacciones humanas

Presta atención. En español, se dice presta atención. Esta frase no es igual en inglés, en que se dice paga atención.

Pasemos tiempo juntos. En español, se dice pasemos tiempo. Esta frase no es igual en inglés tampoco, en que se dice gastemos tiempo.

Tal vez los anglohablantes son demasiado devotos del dinero. Se puede discutir que prestar atención también es una frase con el concepto de deudas, pero para mí la palabra prestar es más suave que pagar. En inglés es poco común: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”

También se puede escuchar en inglés “Let’s pass the time together” pero es un poco raro y solo en el contexto de pasar tiempo con alguien o algo agradable. Más a menudo escuchamos “Let’s spend time together” or “I spent too much time on this project”. En español, se puede usar pasar en todos los contextos.

Me pregunto si diferencias así entre español y inglés reflejan o incluso causan diferencias entre las culturas de los hispanohablantes y los anglohablantes. ¿Cuál vino primero, la lengua o la cultura?

Posted on by William Alba 0

A confiar en el proceso

Me falta un móvil. Pues, no tengo un móvil, pero la mayoría del tiempo, no me importa. A veces, cuando viajo a un lugar desconocido, me gustaría un mapa o direcciones. Pero esto no causa tantos problemas como se podría pensar.

Antes de un viaje a pie, en coche, o en transporte público, estudio un mapa y memorizo los giros. Durante el viaje, consulto la brújula que llevo en la muñeca. A menudo mi tableta puede decirme la ubicación por un chip que detecta movimiento o si hay un señal WiFi. Consulto mapas en un metro y señales en un autobús; nota puntos de referencia como montañas, ríos, y edificios; y pido ayuda a otra gente.

A veces me pierdo. Así es la vida. Se puede aprender más cuando se pierde. Pero no me pierdo muchas veces (es decir, no me aprendo mucho, al menos en esta manera). Es cierto, me perdí durante mi segunda día por el Camino de Santiago, después de que elegí un desvío. Por eso, pasé un rato al lado de una carretera desagradable. El año pasado me frustré en Tijuana cuando caminé en círculos después de cruzar la frontera, y porque las rutas no son diseñadas para peatones.

A pesar de todo, no quiero un móvil. Con una tableta y un portátil, tengo bastante tecnología. Con Google Voice y email, hay suficientes formas de conectar conmigo.

A veces una empresa, como un banco o LinkedIn, quiere el numero de un móvil físico para confirmar mi identidad. Evito empresas así. Solo me faltan los mensajes — las pendajadas, según mi amiga — de mi grupo de mis compañeros hispanohablantes en WhatsApp, porque tengo que confirmar mi identidad allí también. Esta mañana acabo de volver a esa comunidad.

Posted on by William Alba 0

Es decir

Ayer escribí que desecar es un poco extraño, porque a menudo las palabras que comienza con “des” son los opuestos que lo que siguen. Por ejemplo, desayunar es lo opuesto a “ayunar”, descansa” es lo opuesto a “cansar”, desaparecer, descubrir, deshacer, desconsolar, desafortunadamente, desilusionado, desorden, etcetera.

De hecho, el Diccionario RAE dice que el prefijo des- puede indicar variaciones así: negación o inversión (desconfiar), privación (desabejar), fuera de (descamino, deshora). A veces la origen no es tan obvio. No hay verbo struir en español, pero destruir viene de la latina struere, que también está relacionado con estructura, construir, instrucción. Sí existe el verbo arrollar, pero la relación con desarrollar no es muy clara. Me imagino a alguien hace planes con un gran papel como un mapa o un manuscrito que acaba de desenrollar.

A veces des- puede indicar exceso (deslenguado) o afirmación (despavorido), pero en mi experiencia limitada, estos casos son más raros.

Sin embargo, desecar viene del prefijo de-. La palabra es de- + secar, no es des- + “ecar”. Según la RAE, el prefijo de- es diferente que des-. En este contexto, creo que de- es para “reforzar el significado de la palabra primitiva”. Igualmente pero menos obviamente, el origen de desnudar es de- + la latina nudare.

Por supuesto no todas las palabras comienzan con prefijos. Por ejemplo, decir empieza con las letras de por casualidad. La palabra es de la latina dicire. Es decir, solo es decir, no es de de-.

Posted on by William Alba 0

De maneras extrañas

En algunas de nuestras clases hemos estado viendo un video que se llama “Frailejón Ernesto Pérez y la Leyenda de La Gota Más Pura”. Me cae estupendo, especialmente la tema musica, que es adictiva.

En este contexto, la semana pasada mi maestro usó la palabra “desecar”. Hizo una pausa breve y comentó sin explicación que la palabra es un poco rara. Entendí por qué — es decir, “secar” y “desecar” significan casi lo mismo. El ejemplo clásico en inglés es “flammable” y “inflammable”. Los dos quieren decir “fácil de quemar”. En español hay solo una palabra por esto: inflamable.

Sin embargo, por lo general el prefijo “des” hace lo opuesto. He sabido “desayunar” es lo opuesto de “ayunar” — es como en inglés “breakfast” significan el fin (“break”) de un ayuno (“fast”). También en francés: “déjeuner” significan lo opuesto de un ayuno (“jeuner”).

Y aún así me sorprendí más tarde en la semana cuando aprendí el verbo “cansar” en Duolingo. Por supuesto ya sé el adjetivo “cansado/a” y el verbo “descansar”. Pero en mi mente no me di cuenta de que ¡”descansar” es lo opuesto a algo! Es obvio en retrospectiva.

A veces sí hago conexiones lingüísticas rápidamente, a veces no. La mente funciona de maneras extrañas.

Posted on by William Alba 0