Travel
Oh, Say, Can You Sí?
After a week of Spanish lessons in the charming Mexican city of Guanajuato, I was able to tell my fellow students a story. In español, of course.
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When I was not in class, I was usually busy coming to the conclusion that Guanajuato is one of the most appealing cities in Mexico. Its altitude of 6,700 feet provides an ideal year-round climate, especially cool and pleasant during Texas’ hot months. Small parks and plazas are scattered among the ancient buildings, and the air is filled with the aromas of fresh-baked bread and sweet-smelling gardenias sold by street vendors.
With 50,000 university students among a total population of just 120,000, the atmosphere stays lively. In the evenings, in an age-old tradition called las estudiantinas, troupes of singing students in splendid Renaissance costumes roam the city, gathering an ever-larger audience as they go from plaza to plaza. It’s a fine way to fill an evening and, once again, put me in a situation where I could practice my Spanish outside of class.
Thursday night is the big night in Guanajuato because on Friday afternoon many of the college students head to their family homes in the neighboring cities of León or Irapuato. With my weekend also free, I toured some of the local sights. The mummy museum is full of bizarre-looking bodies—partially preserved by the region’s dryness as well as by gases and minerals in the soil—that were exhumed between 1865 and 1985 because their families had stopped paying for their graves. Also of interest are the Valenciana mine (for 250 years the source of 20 percent of the world’s silver) and the spectacular La Valenciana church, the Diego Rivera Museum, and in the chic residential suburb of Marfil, the Presa de los Santos, an ancient masonry dam topped by stone columns bearing statues of saints.
Late that Saturday night I was reminded of something I had discovered while living in Italy many years ago—that the best part of learning a new language is not what you can say but what you can understand. In Mexico everyone has a story. And when the locals realize that a conversation can go beyond rudimentary greetings or simple bartering, they are usually very willing to tell theirs.
That night, the manager of a small hotel told me how the mayor of a neighboring city had been arrested in a house of ill repute with cocaine in his nose and, the manager said, a young man in his bed. From the police station, the mayor had called the governor of the state to bail him out. Though the story had already been printed by one of the local newspapers, the mayor’s cronies bought every copy of the morning edition and thus saved his career. Back in class on Monday morning, I began to retell the story (in Spanish, of course) and realized that I was using a wide range of vocabulary and verb tenses that had been completely foreign to me just a week earlier. My mention of the local scandal led to a discussion of a variety of cultural differences between Mexico and the U.S.
Some of our favorite study aids were the cheap photo “comic” books that are sold at newsstands all over Mexico. Because the language is colloquial, those little rags can be a big help in conversational Spanish. The plots are mildly racy—about like an American daytime soap—but I was surprised to learn from one of our teachers that you have to be eighteen years old to buy these publications. In a similar vein, most Mexican people I spoke with were astonished that so many American kids drink alcohol and experiment with drugs at an early age.
One criticism I had of the instituto was a lack of overall coordination of classes. After listening to three teachers repeatedly cover the four uses of the pronoun se, I was ready to run away screaming. Worst of all, I’m still not certain what the four uses are. I was confused about a variety of other topics as well, but that’s not surprising when you consider the complexities of the Spanish language. There are so many ways to express an idea that many native Spanish speakers find learning English difficult because to them it seems so vague. The precision of Spanish, in which a change of one letter at the end of a word can radically shift its meaning, is enough to drive a slow learner completely bonkers. After repeated memorization, I am finally able to remember that, when asking or giving directions, derecho means “straight ahead” and a la derecha means “to the right”—unless it’s the other way around.
Of course, if a basic vocabulary and minimal understanding are all you’re after, there are easier ways to learn than in an intensive classroom. There are hundreds of books, audio tapes, and even CD-ROMs devoted to teaching Spanish. If you’ve gotten past the standard phrase books, you’ll need a good grammar book (like Spanish Grammar from Hippocrene Books) or a complete conjugation of Spanish verbs. I’m also partial to Mexican Slang, a guide to street language by Linton H. Robinson. After you consult it, your conversational skills may still be a little unpolished, but at least you’ll know that mierda doesn’t mean “fear” (that’s miedo) but … well, look it up yourself.
Near the end of the second week of classes, my mind began to wander out the windows to the streets below. When I realized that I’d reverted to the classroom clock-watcher of my youth, I knew that I was done. Playing hooky on Friday morning, I wandered around town, for once not talking to anyone except my regular newspaper vendor, who noticed that I had shifted back to buying only the English-language editions.
When it began to rain, I ducked into a fabric store, where a man who was pushing eighty asked in formal and deliberate Spanish if I was from America. He’d been there once, he said with great pride, had traveled in 1944 to Billings, Montana, where he worked as a stone crusher on a highway crew. “The strong men of the United States,” he told me with a slurring accent and a faraway smile, “were fighting the war that must be won.” We spoke of the beauty of Montana, then he sold me some hand-crocheted baby clothes, wonderfully detailed baptism outfits priced at an astounding $4 each.
Waiting in the doorway for the rain to stop, I heard him tell someone in the back room that an American had been in, an American who spoke Spanish. I smiled at the compliment, happy to have had a little more than the perfunctory exchange but also knowing that what the old man had said about me was not true. Two weeks had taught me just enough to know that I will probably never master the complexities and subtleties of Spanish.
I was reminded of a joke one of our teachers had told us on the first day of class. What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. And what do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bilingual. So what do you call a person who speaks one language? An American.
Travel Information american airlines and continental Airlines have direct flights from Dallas and Houston to León, and Aeromexico flies from San Antonio to León with a stop in Monterrey; buses and cabs are available at the airport for the seventeen-mile trip to Guanajuato.
Instituto Falcón, Callejón de la Mora 158, Guanajuato 36000, GTO, Mexico (011-52-47-32-36-94; e-mail www.infalcon @redes.int.com.mx). Advance registration recommended (applicants will be sent an information packet). Tuition depends on the number of classes taken (students may take from two to six classes a day).
Hotel y Museo Santa Fe, Jardín de la Unión 12, Guanajuato 36050, GTO, Mexico (011-52-47-32-00-84; fax 011-52-47-32-46-53). Double room $55; reservations recommended.
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