Turns out right when you start to get a hang of a second language everything linguistic you know begins to jumble up. In Paris I had someone say "Bon appetit!" to me in the hostel as I was making dinner. My response? To smile and nod. I couldn't think, for the life of me, what language I was supposed to be responding in. Italian? French? Spanish? English? My brain drew a total blank. In my defense that day I spoke English, Spanish, and French (ok, not much French...but enough phrases to confuse my overloaded brain). A good awkward silence later I explained to him that I drew a blank and couldn't remember how to respond. Being a hostel employee who is used to lots of languages flying around he understood.
Even more entertaining than fumbling through the few phrases I know in German and French while traveling, is the effort it takes to use English. I am a good speller. By no means do I intend for that to sound pretentious, but unless a word is particularly long or complicated I don't have trouble. I was runner-up in my 3rd grade spelling bee. (I lost on oxygen. I will never spell that wrong again. But honestly, they said it like "oxy-gin" so that is how I spelled it.) The point is I normally don't spell things wrong, which makes what comes next particularly entertaining. In Spanish everything is spelled phonetically. Which is great for learning Spanish--but dangerous for switching back to English. As I noticed my loss of ability to spell simple words in English I decided to start a list. So here it is, a list of words I have spelled wrong over the past month or so (the way I spelled it is on the left, the real spelling is on the right): neer-near thaught-thought plunty-plenty sais-says grees-grease screan-screen deer-dear (meant dear, wrote deer) cole-coal analisis-analysis Most of them I caught...but sometimes (especially on Skype, where I don't have spellcheck) I would just stare at the word, wondering why it looked so wrong.
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Claire AngelineI am traveling the world from October 2017-October 2018, and the plan is to visit all seven continents. I'm a vegetarian foodie, a baker, a dance enthusiast, a nonprofit co-founder, and a huge travel addict. When I'm not traveling I'm putting my MPH to good use and doing public health research. Archives
September 2016
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