it has been a bit over a week since I have posted here on the blog, so I thought I should just start in spanish. I’ve become a bit of a Spanish teacher, both in the classroom and on the job. I guess I always wanted to get back into grammar and culture.
I have to say that I am a bit of a “language fanatic,” in that I really love to learn new languages. Some languages I really love, and some I really hate. I’m also a bit of a nerd, so sometimes I get really excited by new things.
If you are a nerd, then why not become a nerd at your job? Many jobs are based on that, so if you have a job that requires you to be a certain way, then I would say that is an awesome thing to do. If you have a job that you dont care about language, you can always go into another field that does.
In my own job I am a marketing manager, which means that I get to be a little OCD about how I use marketing budgets. I am so obsessed with all the different ways that I can use the budget that I sometimes get a bit of a headache and have to look at my company’s annual budget to make sure that I dont overspend. I like to see where our company spends the money that we have. Then I can see whether I should be spending more or less.
Well, I have to admit that I don’t use Spanish as much as I should. But after a couple of years of watching my coworkers with the Spanish in their last names, I started to think that English was the better option. I could always blame my wife for not speaking Spanish, but how would I explain that I am the only American in the company? It seems that this is a common problem in the marketing world, but I think that it is especially so in the advertising world.
Speaking Spanish in the US is a very common thing, but it’s not a very productive one. Spanish is a very confusing language, with lots of slang, colloquialisms, and funny idioms. In this case, it’s really easy to explain to coworkers that you don’t actually speak Spanish. You just have a lot of American slang in your vocabulary. And even though you’re just a small bit of a foreigner yourself, you’re much more likely to sound like one.
Like all words, Spanish can be used with different senses. You can use it as a noun, as an adjective, as an adverb, etc. So if you want to sound like a native speaker, you can actually learn Spanish. Just google “learn spanish” and you’ll find tons of pages dedicated to this.
Well, you have to go to the right place. Google’s spanish language and translation tool is pretty decent.
You may have noticed that the first sentence of every word in this paragraph is a direct translation of the Spanish language. I find that to be the norm if you want to sound like a native speaker.
While I think it is a good idea to learn Spanish, it may be more useful to learn Spanish as a second language (especially with the increasing number of language apps for phones, tablets, etc.) or to learn Spanish as a foreign language. I don’t really have a problem with learning Spanish as a foreign language but I do find that when I try to speak it in English, it often sounds strange.
