Vocabulario de cientos palabras

I spent the past year of grad school wrapping my brain around the idea of language as a cultural construct- and how that enables or limits your ability to conceptualize the world. Now, while learning a new language, I find myself on the front lines of this concept.

The process of learning a language requires the pairing up of words "this means this". However, words rarely possess a one-to-one exchange across languages. Each word holds meaning within the culture that one cannot fully understand until, if ever, one knows the language in and out. Thus the crude attempt at swapping one word for another makes for a shakey and tedious aquisition of ideas. However I think it is nessisary to the learning of a language. I find it difficult to wrap my brain around the new words and phrasing and grammar without taking everything and associating it to what I am already familiar with. I wonder how long it takes until that constant pairing is no longer nessisary and you are able to just own the word as what it is.

Another interesting delima I find myself having is the complete and utter loss of the power of my vocabulary. In English I like to think I have a fairly good vocabulary. Through Grad school, and a general desire to articulate myself better, it continues to grow. However I rarely am at a loss of a multitude of words to express what I´m thinking. Suddenly I no longer have most of those words. I speak like a two-year-old. My sentences are jaggedly pieced together verbs, usually in the wrong tenses, that usually, vagely and in the simplest terms express what I need to say. I only talk when nessisary, and only attempt comments I´ve plotted out in my head and feel I can probably tackle. It is odd to be robbed of the ability to communicate. However, at the same time it is amazing to be learning to communicate all over again. It is like a puzzle- how to use the limited resources I have to get my point across. I´m like McGyver of limited Spanish.

I can see why Antigua is an ideal place to do a begining immersion program. The combination of neumerous schools and a population that speaks mostly only spanish makes for a perfect blend of being forced to practice my Spanish with a safty net for when I don´t have the words.