shoestring gringa

For all you bloggers and readers out there in Spanish-language land, I thought I’d pass on my latest discovery of how to insert special characters like accented letters into a Wordpress (or any HTML) document.  I’m sure there are many ways to do this, and possibly better ways, but this one is so simple that I’ve managed to use it several times in a row without having to reread the instructions.  I found it on this blog, thanks Tech Paul!  Basically you put the Character Map (which I never knew was even IN my computer; it’s in Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Character Map) onto your Quick Launch bar.  Then when you need an accented letter, simply click the Character Map icon and it will pop up in a small screen.  Select the font if needed (default is Arial), click on the character, click Select and then Copy.  Go back to your document and do Ctrl V or Paste to insert the character.  The Character Map will remain minimized on the Task Bar.

I must say the Character Map is an annoying little tool, with no rhyme or reason to its arrangement that I can see, so in the interest of public service I am going to share the location of the characters needed for Spanish here.  These, by the way, are all in the first ten rows, so you don’t have to scroll.

¡ — 5th row down

¿ — 7th row down

á — 8th row down

é, í, ó, and ñ — 9th row down

ú — 10th row down

Note that the ñ is not among the other n’s as logic would suggest, but sandwiched in among the vowels.

In the course of setting this up, I made a number of fascinating discoveries about the Quick Launch bar, which I do not have the strength to describe.

When typing words in Spanish, it’s usually no big deal to just leave the accents off, but once in a while you really need them, as when I wanted to wish everybody a happy new year here:

¡Feliz Año Nuevo! = Happy New Year!

¡Feliz Ano Nuevo! = Happy New Butthole!

So what’s the best way to learn Spanish? Some words of advice from one who learned it the worst way.

I learned, or rather studied Spanish, in college. I was so interested in this at the time that I majored in Latin American Studies so I could take as many Spanish courses as possible and fit in some cultural studies as well.

The Spanish department at my school was at that time hopelessly antiquated and taught basically grammar, supplemented with a little audio work in the language lab. Although the graduate student teaching assistants were mostly native speakers, English was the primary means of communication in the classroom. I quickly sensed I was getting nowhere fast with speaking and understanding, even though I was making all A’s.

Fortunately, I was really determined. I accepted an offer of free tutoring from a similarly obsessed Spanish major, and we would meet weekly to converse, dictionaries in hand and a strict “no-English” rule in force. Together we attended every Spanish film or cultural event that passed through the Bay Area. We ate in Mexican and Spanish restaurants. We perused exhibits of Hispanic art. We listened to South American charango music and saw flamenco performances. We made flash cards and drilled verbs. We spent hours in the language lab listening to historical recorded speeches by Fidel Castro, Lazaro Cardenas, and others. And we did eventually manage to speak and understand Spanish. But it was unnecessarily torturous (apart from the cultural stuff, which we loved) and I am convinced that the initial grammatical approach handicapped me to this day, particularly with regard to comprehension. I can speak Spanish quite well, but I still miss a lot of what others are saying, especially under suboptimal conditions, such as the presence of lots of background noise (a given in Mexico), or having more than one person talking at a time (like at parties).

Towards the end of my undergraduate career, I decided to audit a French class. Same school, even the same building probably. But the French department was light years ahead of the Spanish department, even though their basic text was equally crappy and overpriced. Their secret? They allowed only French spoken in the classroom. Madame, the teacher, spoke exclusively French, and she spoke plenty of it, keeping up a constant patter throughout the class hour. If you, the student, wished to ask leave to go to the toilet, or inquire when the next quiz was going to be, you had to do it in French. It was amazingly effective, miraculous, really. I learned more French in those 10 weeks than I’d done in two years of Spanish, and this despite the fact that I almost never had time to do the homework. Although I never pursued it that much and therefore lack vocabulary, I can follow a French movie almost as well as a Spanish one, and once after spending three weeks in Paris I found I was understanding maybe 75% of what I heard. I remain deeply impressed by the difference in these two learning experiences.

The moral: I would humbly recommend that you seek out what is called the “natural approach” in your language studies, and avoid old-fashioned grammar like the plague. If going to live classes, insist upon ones where only Spanish is spoken. If using audio or video material, look for similar qualities. You’ll gain a far better grasp of the language, a whole lot faster, and it’ll be more fun, too.

Do you want to live among many or few of your fellow gringos? Because both scenarios are available. First of all, how’s your Spanish? (You do speak, or are learning, Spanish, aren’t you?) If it’s rudimentary or nonexistent, you’ll need to stick to places with enough fellow English-speakers around make life possible for you. I personally would find this kind of limitation unacceptable.

How sociable are you? If you depend heavily on the company of others for your well-being, and your Spanish is less than adequate, again, better keep to areas with a good supply of potential friends/drinking buddies/backgammon partners, or whatever.

Moving to a foreign country can be isolating, even if your language skills are okay. If you move with a spouse or partner, you’ll be thrown together far more (especially at first) than you ever were in your former life when you both had jobs, buddies, yoga classes, etc. It can be stressful on the relationship. Having ready access to some new buddies can be helpful.

If you’re engaged in absorbing work and used to spending lots of time alone, then access to social resources is not such a big issue. I usually spend the day painting (or more recently, writing this). We’ve made friends here, but don’t see them very often — much like when we lived in the states — because everybody is working.

The advent of the internet has been a huge boon to wanderers everywhere, allowing people to stay connected to friends, information, reading, and entertainment from just about anyplace in the world. It can really take the edge off living in an otherwise isolated situation.

A big advantage of living in a gringo-rich area, possibly even more important than the gringos themselves, is the resources that tend to collect around them. The thing that springs foremost to my mind is English-language libraries. (I really miss the Public Library!) There was one in Merida and I understand there’s one in the Lake Chapala area. There is also, I understand, a big organic vegetable gardening enterprise there. Things like professional pet-sitters, English-language bookstores, and English-speaking doctors are also more likely to be found in expatriate areas.

The big, obvious disadvantage of choosing an area with a large gringo population is the inflated prices you’ll find there. Most of the expatriates from the US or Canada that I’ve encountered are pretty prosperous (at least compared to us), and they tend to drive up housing prices disastrously. This was occurring in Merida when we were there, and has long been true of places like Ajijic and San Miguel de Allende. So, if you’re operating on a shoestring, you will have to go further afield (and speak Spanish) to encounter affordable housing either to rent or to buy. In a large city, like Guadalajara say, you could just explore the non-gringo areas, but smaller places are likely to be expensive across the board. We didn’t even bother checking out San Miguel when we were looking for a new location, because I just assumed it would be too expensive.

It is of course possible, with enough money, to live in a gringo enclave so insular you can’t even tell you’re in Mexico, but that’s not the kind of life we’re talking about here in shoestring-land. In order to taste the delights of the real Mexico, and also to cope with day-to-day life, it is necessary to acquire a decent amount of Spanish (it doesn’t need to be fabulous, just usable). Then you will be free to establish your other priorities and pick and choose accordingly.