Pleasing to greet it and that to the Good is blessing
it God greatly in the work that comes realising.
That joy to again have it in our university
together with the students of the new group.
The reason for the present is for asking
for the complete name of the person who will come with you.
Dr. Hernandez, that it has a pretty day!
I showed it to Sam, who is a man of few words.
"Terrible everything," he said.
I'm still chuckling.
I remember one time when I had just learned the German art song, Das Erlkonig. This gripping story is one of intrigue and is very exciting to sing, especially in German, with fantastic sounding words adding to the emotional climate of the song. One can hear the hoofbeats in the pounding piano accompaniament--an image of furiously galloping horses to get away from this nightmarish apparition. The singer must imitate the sneaky Earlking, the frightened child, and the father as he tries to reassure the child that the Earlking could not hurt him. Particularly dramatic is last line sung about what happened when the man finally reached his destination:
"In seinen Armen das Kind war todt!" (You can see an inaccurate but interesting attempt to act out this song here).
Very proudly, I sang some of this for my German friends. It would be wonderful for them to see that I had some command of their language--I was decidedly not one of those dumb, monolingual Americans. As soon as the last tortured words were out of my mouth I realized that something was quite wrong. Uli was struggling to find just the right, neutral comments to acknowledge that I had sung in German without telling me that out-and-out, he couldn't understand much of it.
Andy, his brother, was a bit more forthcoming in a sweet way. "I could understand a few words, maybe."
I was absolutely mortified after such a proud display on my part.
This reminds me of being 10 years old and very keen on learning Spanish. Someone gave me an old Spanish language textbook and I was trying to teach myself to speak it. For some reason, it was easier to learn than other languages that I heard in our town: Italian, Polish, Korean and Russian. A lovely family moved to our little town and lived there for a couple years. They came from El Salvador, I think. They had two beautiful daughters, Betty and Eunice, who were about 10 years older than me and I thought they were the most lovely creatures I had ever met. Always smiling, delightfully gracious, and very talented.
After they left, I wrote Betty a long letter in Spanish. I told her all of the things that my limited language skills allowed me to: that I missed her and her family, that I was still studying Spanish, and that the flowers in the front of their house still bloomed, etc.
A couple weeks later I received a letter from Betty telling me all about her new home, etc.
In Spanish. I had to get out my little dictionary and look up everything, but everything couldn't be found.
Folded inside her letter was my miserable little letter to her--all marked up with a red pen. She had corrected all my errors. The whole page was one red blur. I was devastated that all the work I had been putting into learning a new language hadn't paid off the way I imagined it had. The letters got put in the bottom of a drawer and I never tried to speak the language again.
Silly me.
I wish someone would correct all of my miserable attempts to speak other languages now--they are laughable and in the U.S. we don't have the opportunity to learn languages like people in Europe or Asia do, crossing borders weekly into countries with different customs and languages.
Now I do have the opportunity to learn Spanish--and have had this opportunity in a very real way for the last six years in the person of Sam. Every now and again I try to say something to him, be it romantic, descriptive, or a casual comment. Mostly, it elicits a confused look from him. "What are you trying to say, honey?"
Bless the heart of this dear little university assistant who wrote me such a confusing email. She is trying, and that is more than I do.
I think I will study Spanish in earnest.
And yes, I will have a pretty day.
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