En Espanol

Stepping up to the check-out line in the bookstore, I quickly discovered that I didn't have with me the gift card which I'd planned on using to pay. Though I had plenty of money on me, I couldn't bring myself to dish out the extra ten or twenty dollars for something knowing that I could get it later and already have it paid for.

The choice between the two books I was carrying was not anything of a struggle at all, and hardly even constituted a choice.

In the one hand I had The Upanishads: the thousands of years old scripts of Hindi faith. Essentially, it is their equivalent of a Christian Testament, though much older, and is to me an invaluable work of art.

In the other hand I had Spanish for Dummies.

I returned The Upanishads to their place on the shelf without hesitation, saving myself ten dollars and forking over almost thirty for my Espanol por Noobs.

Having invested years ago in teaching myself German, I have a very distinct taste for how a self-teach system of linguistics should work. To be certain, this Spanish book is nothing like that. Of course, this is a book designed to teach imprudent Americans to say, "Hello and where is your bathroom?" and not promote any true fluency. It is my simple hope, however, that I can at least learn rules of conjugation, negation, reflexive verbing and etc that will be important steps toward building a true understanding rather than prefabricated statements.

In many ways Spanish seems to be not very unique from French, however after just a short time it becomes obvious that, though they are both romance languages, Spanish is far more masculine and therefore, to me, much more preferable.

I of course do not mean this in a man and woman sort of masculine, but in the purely linguistic form such that French and Portuguese would be effeminate, while German and Russian would be masculine, for a couple examples.

A friend from Puerto Rico has agreed to help me in my learning, and though I'm not sure how dedicated of a teacher he will be, I'll definitely be pushing him to keep his word. I'm trying very hard to be enthused about this language that I have neglected and abused for so long, but it is probably thanks only to the oddities of the Argentines that I find it at all interesting.

I can tell, though, that I am fortunate to be learning Latin American Spanish and not Castillano Spanish. As with sculpting, I am discovering that what I remove is just as important as what is there. The lack of pronouns in conversational Spanish almost gives it a cave-man feel to an English speaker at the first look. To one who has studied linguistics, however, it is quite an ingenious omission.

Though I can already feel that I will not take to any romance language as willingly as I have the Germanic (Slavic, Asian, etc) tongue, romance languages seem universally simpler and extremely lacking in linguistic prowess to the point that I cannot imagine that, with any diligence, any of them would prove very difficult at all.

Hopefully I will not have to eat those words, or if I do, by the time I am forced to will be able to devour them in Spanish.