I'm having a boring evening so I'm back already. Aphra sounds like you and I have experienced the same situation. Isn't always easier to speak abroad with someone who appreciates your broken Spanish. They are thankful and apprecitaive rather than critical...rgf, for whatever reason, my inlaws mostly call me yay-me.
Lame story-Four years ago when I went to apply at the Spanish restaurant where I met my husband, my speaking skills were limited and I guess I was not fully aware that "Jaime" could not be a girl's name. I walked in and said to my future brother-n-law, Hola, me llamo Jaime(pronounced in Spanish) They have been razzing me about that for a long time. People in general do think its somewhat strange. I get alot of mail and phone calls adressing Mr. Jaime.....My econ development prof. the other day asked me if I was aware that my real name is Hi-may. I told her that in fact it wasn't since I am a gringa Wisconsite.

As far as language goes I always thought I had a flair for them too. I listened to French pronunciation tapes at home just for fun of it all throughout highschool. When it came to just listening to conversation and picking it up I thought I was pretty decent. The problem is that I had too much pride and was always afraid of making a mistake or looking dumb. I wish I would have swallowed it long ago and I wouldn't have had to work as much later.

This language stuff is interesting, and maybe could have gone in new, better labelled (!), thread.

Anyhow, re. aspects of Spanish that are difficult for English speakers, no one mentioned the subjunctive! Looking back on my high school classes, it seems we spent years working around the fact that it exists, simply ignoring those kinds of expressions where it's needed (ie. things as simple and everyday as, "I want you to help me", or "She's glad I came"). This doesn't seem the right approach - one day, after years of studying, this whole "hidden" thing is revealed to you, and it's like "WHAT THE ...!!"

Is it still taught that way?

Boqueron-- I don't know about in High School, but in university classes we throw the subjunctive in there after a few weeks. As for this thread, I think "estoy americanos" sums up nicely the core issues of language we are all discussing! Todavia no estoy harta.

Hola todos-
What about por/para? I always (and still do ocassionally) had problems with that.
What is the Regents exam? Is that for AP Spanish? Actualmente soy profesora de ESL de primaria (¿Así se dice?) y dentro de poco me gustaría ser profesora de Español de instituto. ¡Que sigan los comentarios!

I loathe the subjunctive!! Although Boqueron, I have the opposite problem that you did, the Spanish dept. is constantly shoving the subjunctive in our face. We are required in addition to writing and composition classes, to take three sections of escritura independiente in which we write papers and do exercises on our own time and meet up with the professor later. Usually the excercises are subjunctive and I have to slave over them for hours.

Jen, I think por/para is also one of the harder things. Sometimes my husband and I will be speaking to a really fluent/great accent etc..NA Spanish apeaker and I'll say "doesn't that person sound like a native speaker?" Usually he says ya but the por/para thing gives them away as not being native. Since then I have tried to clean my act up but still don't know in some situations.

[This message has been edited by Jaime (edited 02-05-2001).]

amusing but true.... a group of high school students were visiting our univ. classes in Buffalo. One professor did a whole class on por/para, with many examples.... at the end of the class, one of the h.s. students goes up to him and says, "gracias PARA una clasa muy interesante!" so.... it IS hard!

Regents' exams are a NY state thing, BTW

Por/para is tough, but when it comes to prepositions I think the Spanish have a much tougher deal learning English, as English has many more of them, and many uses are "idiomatic" (my wife has a lot of trouble with in/on/at, e.g., "in the way" v. "on the way").

Hey you guys, I totally agree with everything said here...I do believe language learning reaches plateaus and one must overcome them to advance to the next level (so to speak), I have been in a rut for the last 3 to 4 years and have just recently advanced to the next level...I mean, my husband was getting sick of always repeating the same vocabulary words to me over and over...I don't know, but on this last trip, I just let my guard down and didn't care about making mistakes or looking stupid, and just the opposite occurred...I have improved tremendously...I think my inhibitions were keeping me back...
And I do agree that learning English is probably more difficult, just the other day, I was trying to explain to my husband the difference between "meat and potatoes" and "bread and butter"...
Happy Learning to All!!!

rgf, sospecho que eres una profesora muy sincera y tan maravillosa a todos tus estudiantes con tu actitud llena de deseo ferviente para enseñarlos todo español de manera tan española, la «manera perfecta» a mi parecer.

I wish to say I admire you greatly for your eagerness to teach in such a formal, adequate way, where students should feel comfortable to speak with their teacher. I attest to the awesome blessing which the Lord has given me through a teacher, who has lived in Spain for many, many years, and has endured so many trials, yet so many experiences which I grasp with my heart to apply.

Deseo que continúes como maestra casi perfecta : ) Que Dios te bendiga, Doña rgf, y Él te bendecirá sin duda alguna por tu esfuerzo de todo corazón.

[This message has been edited by Jefe (edited 03-04-2001).]

Just to cap this one off a bit, for those of us who've moved on from school (well, that's not entirely true of me, since I have a dissertation looming, but I haven't taken a Spanish class in about 10 years)...

My father-in-law, an educational psychology prof at SUNY Buffalo (rgf, is that where you are too?), says something I find incredibly comforting about language learning/language forgetting. Apparently research has shown that, once we stop studying/using a language, we enter a forgetting curve that bottoms out after 5 years. What that means is that whatever we keep for 5 years, we keep for good!

So the fluency I had upon returning from Salamanca in 1990 may be gone, but every time I have gone back to Spain since (1993, 1995, and 2001), I get around with about the same degree of proficiency. Of course, that amounts to a halfway-decent ability to talk about the present, but complete ignorance when it comes time to talk about either the past or the future! And of course, I haven't lost my Salamanca-cultivated accent, of which I have always been quite proud!

So hang on to what you can for 5 years, and then enjoy using it on all future trips to Spain, folks! It's not going anywhere!

Tara