with much gusto

What's striking about the way Spanish speakers say "you're welcome" is how certain countries will almost exclusively use one phrase over all the others. In English we can respond to thanksgiving in all sorts of ways, both formally and informally. "No problem" or "forget about it" would be typical responses, even though they don't exactly mean "you're welcome". If you tally up all the acceptable responses that could be used all over the United States without confusion, you'd probably have dozens of them.

In Costa Rica, on the other hand, I have only heard "con mucho gusto" as a response to "gracias". It's essentially the Spanish equivalent of the English "it's my pleasure". Costa Ricans will certainly understand "de nada", "no hay de qué", and "no hay porqué", but they aren't likely to use them.

De nada is the most ubiquitous of all the aforementioned forms, probably because of its prominence in large countries like Mexico and Spain. "No hay porqué" is largely confined to Argentina (at least in my experience).

Cabecera

Perhaps the most common Spanish word for pillow is almohada, but Costa Ricans tend to use cabecera for the pillow that you sleep on. This word should not be confused with cabezazo, which is a header (when you strike the soccer ball with your head).

A funny expression that I picked up in Costa Rica was planchar la oreja, or iron the ear, which one would say before going to bed.

Example: "Tengo sueño. Voy a planchar la oreja."

Converting your laptop keyboard to Spanish

I just got a new Dell laptop and have been unimpressed by the lack of the numeric keyboard, which I could access on my old HP laptop by pressing the fn button. I figured it was time for me to change my keyboard settings to Spanish, instead of using the numeric keyboard and alt functions for Spanish characters. So far it has worked out well not having to deal with the several keystrokes necessary to toggle between different keyboard settings.

In Windows 7 I went to my Control Panel and clicked on "Clock, Language, and Region." From there click on "Change keyboards and other input methods." Then, a new window will pop up with the proper "Language and Keyboards" tab selected. Click on "Change Keyboards." From here you will be able to add a language if it isn't already installed. My laptop came with only English (US) installed. Click on "Add" to find your language. Once you've done that, click on "Apply." Then, click on the "Language Bar" tab to change where the language bar shows up. This bar will help you switch from English to Spanish and from Spanish to English.

Once you've switched to a Spanish keyboard, you can write 'ñ' by clicking on the ';' key. You can also type an accented vowel by typing ´ on your Spanish keyboard (shown as '[{' on your English keyboard) plus the desired vowel.

Teaching Spanish

I started teaching teaching Spanish on the west side of Chicago two weeks ago. While I am overwhelmed by the challenges of teaching 450 students from grades ranging from K to 8th and everything in between, I am excited to engage students in the Spanish language. The most difficult aspect of teaching, aside from general classroom management problems, will be the commitment to using the target language in the classroom. Yesterday my curriculum specialist warned me that students won't have the patience to sit through a class in which I'm speaking Spanish the entire time. While that's a possibility, I think it will depend entirely on my delivery.

If I can scaffold my lessons (provide adequate support for newly introduced material) so that what I'm presenting is given the proper context for understanding, students will soon catch up with the material and extract meaning from the spoken language. For example, since I am fortunate enough to have an LCD projector I can use images in a PowerPoint presentation to give context clues that--along with prior knowledge of Spanish and sense of cognates--will allow students to grasp new vocabulary AND interpret the meaning of complete sentences.

While I don't plan on building a Spanish curriculum that breaks any ground in language instruction, I would at least like to resist the temptation of teaching Spanish as a purely academic pursuit taught in English. Memorizing verb conjugations and whacking piñatas on Cinco de Mayo is one way of getting exposed to the Spanish language, but it's insufficient for true proficiency in the language. To speak a language you need to practice speaking the language in as natural of a setting as possible. That setting must be immersive!

I must admit that I have an intense fear of mediocrity. I don't want it for myself and I don't want it for my students. I feel that if I cave in and do what's most expedient for myself in the short term, I will give my students average instruction that will prevent them from closing the academic achievement gap with their peers in more affluent communities.

Sure, two Spanish classes per week won't turn low-performing students into high-performing ones, but it certainly wouldn't hurt. Put more convincingly, studies show that students with foreign language instruction perform better in literacy and math. This is more a stream of consciousness type of post, so I don't have the time or the will to back that up at this time, but let's just take it as a give for now (at least until I can write a more complete post about it later).

If I can help out my students' overall academic performance by teaching them the four main skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing in Spanish, I am going to take advantage of that opportunity the best way I know how. I don't want to settle for the mindless regurgitation of vocabulary and verb forms, which won't be retained and won't be transferable to other realms of their academic and personal lives.

I'll spend my Labor Day weekend trying to improve my lesson plans for upcoming weeks. Maybe I will end up caving in and take it down a notch on my Spanish-to-English ratio in class, but I won't go down without a fight.

"Pueblo pequeño, infierno grande"

"Small town, big hell", many people say in small towns in Costa Rica. While most Costa Ricans I know live in small towns on purpose, nearly all admit that the chisme--or gossip--can be relentless. I learned this firsthand. (Although, luckily, for nothing bad.) It was hard to do much of anything in my rural village of 250 people, or "in town" where about 6,000 people lived, without everyone knowing about it. It might sound pretty harmless, but if you are betting on spending a lifetime in one of these towns, the pressure to maintain healthy relationships and at least a guise of a respectable lifestyle (however your neighbors define it) can be a lot to handle. That's not to say that you have to be perfect, but any slip-up can be committed to public memory for a good part of your life. So, things you do--good, bad, and otherwise--tend to make their way back to you. It's a haunting concept for some, a kind of surveillance from which there is no escaping.

Anyway, small towns have a lot of the same problems as big cities--and verse visa--but only in a small town can a large percentage of the population be privy to your most intimate personal details (or at least have their own version of them). The end result is the perception that sometimes it is a "big hell". However, for most rural folk, these moments simply come with the territory of living in a pleasant, otherwise relaxing place.

Sorry, Dora, it ain't a "mochila"

On a few occasions I was subjected to episodes of "Dora la Explordora", which--unlike the English title--actually rhymes. I always preferred the name "Dora la Explotadora". Anyway, in one episode I recall an ingenious song with the following lyrics:

La mochila,
la mochila,
la mochila,
la mochila,
la mochila,
la mochila,
la mochila,
la mochila,
la mochila!

Costa Ricans understand mochila as backpack, but I have most often heard the word salveque. While both words can be used interchangeably in Costa Rica, the most local word is salveque.

Here are some other local words that are used more often than their Spanish alternatives, most of which are more common in the Spanish-speaking world:

Costa Rican Word/Common Spanish Alternative/Translation

abanico/ ventilador/ fan (box or ceiling)
enojado/ enfadado (Spain)/ angry
birra/ cerveza/ beer
boñiga/ estiércol/ manure
bomba/ gasolinera/ gas station
cabecera/ almohada/ pillow
calzones (not the food)/ ropa interior/ underwear (bottoms)
carro/ coche, auto/ car
faja/ cinturón/ belt (clothing)
largo/ lejos/ far, far away
macho/ rubio/ blond
zancudo/ mosquito/ mosquito
olores/ especias/ spices
pajilla/ pajita/ drinking straw
queque/ torta, pastel/ cake
rabo/ cola/ tail of an animal
tiquete/ boleto/ ticket

Water in Costa Rica

Agua, one of Costa Rica's most valuable assets, comes in many forms. Water falls from the sky, mixes with clay, springs from the ground, and falls from cliffs. Here is some of the most useful Costa Rican terminology related to water:

Rain
llovizna - drizzle or sprinkle

pelo de gato - very light rain

aguacero - torrential downpour

baldazo - literally a big bucket (a storm that's raining buckets)


Mud
barro - mud

tierra - soil, earth

arcilla - clay


Natural spring
naciente (f) - natural spring (a word that appears to be almost exclusive to Costa Rica)

manantial (m) - natural spring


Waterfall
catarata - waterfall (cascada is rarely used)


Well
pozo - well

poza - deep swimming hole in a river

bomba - water pump for a well (among many other things, if you care to click on the link)


Others
aguado - watery, dilute

echar agua - conceding position to an opponent to give the impression of weakness, sandbagging

aguadulce - popular drink made of hot water and brown sugar

aguachinarse - to lose one's crops due to excessive rain, to contract a fungal infection from excessive wetness

agua potable - potable water

acueducto - aqueduct, potable water project

agua del tubo - tap water (agua de la llave is more common in South America)

"Momses and Dadses"

In rural parts of Costa Rica, people often use a double plural form for certain nouns. That is, they attach an extra plural suffix to a noun where a plural suffix already exists.

To pluralize a word in Spanish you either add an '-s' or an '-es', an 'es' being necessary when the noun ends in a consonant. In Costa Rica I have heard the double plural for 'papases', with an '-s-es' ending.

In this context there is a possible reasonable explanation: If the regular plural form 'papás' refers to one set of parents, 'papases' could conceivably refer to a group of parents.

Regardless of the merits of this armchair etymology, the double plural appears to extend to other nouns whose last syllable is the tonic syllable. For example, I have heard 'mamases' and 'bebeses' (coming from 'bebé'), which contain the double plural, but cannot be rationalized as a group of plural elements.

Double plurals have arisen in other languages, but they usually occur when the former plural suffix becomes improductive. In Spanish, the '-s' and '-es' suffixes are entirely valid standing alone to pluralize their respective nouns, so I don't recommend using the double plural form. But it's sure fun to listen to :)

Word of the Day: Palenque

Palenque can mean any number of things in Spanish, from a fence post (or tethering post) to a cockfight. My first exposure to the word was when I was studying slavery in the New World, in which context it means a society of marooned (escaped) slaves.

In Costa Rica, however, palenque is almost exclusively reserved as a generic term for indigenous reservations.

In Costa Rica:

Palenque = reserva indígena

Vergazo

Costa Ricans will often use the word vergazo to mean a strong punch with a fist. This is a colloquial term you might hear in a rural cantina. Keep in mind that the word verga means 'dick'. So, this isn't exactly church language. (Of course, punching people isn't exactly church behavior either.)

Word of the Day: Tiquete

Tiquete is the most common Costa Rican word for ticket. Most people will understand the word boleto, especially in context, but whenever it's a question of a bus ticket or an plane ticket, you'll almost always hear tiquete.

Note: In Costa Rica people will also use the term pasaje, which means 'passage' and can be used interchangeably with tiquete in most cases. One exception would be when you're referring directly to the physical ticket itself, in which case tiquete would be most appropriate.

Va a llover, it's raining

Often when it rained in the rural area where I lived, someone would say "va a llover". It doesn't take much knowledge of Spanish to recognize this as a future tense. So, why would people say that it's going to rain right when it starts raining? It's anyone's guess, but here's mine:

This phrase is likely a projection of continued rain throughout the day. If it starts raining, and the outlook for the foreseeable hours in the day look grim, people will predict a considerable amount of rainfall, using only a three-word prhase.

I can respect this type of communication. People tend to shorten language when they're among people of similar background. Heck, why not use a few words when that's all you need to get your point across? With that said, I went through several months of frustration because of my relative lack of local understanding. For example, people would always tell me that I need to go para arriba [parriba] or para abajo [pabajo] to go where I needed to go. To me, up or down didn't mean much because I was unfamiliar with the relative altitudes of different villages. What seemed obvious to all the locals was a great mystery to me.

But with time I learned the subtleties of language in my rural corner of Costa Rica. Eventually, instead of saying that the rain will probably last till tomorrow morning, I learned to kick back and say "va a llover". And it felt good.