A woman at work brought in some DVDs to learn Spanish. We decided we would get together over the
lunch hour and meet in one of the conference rooms. Tom went to Costco and bought 3 extra-large
pizzas, and really, Costco has some good pizzas! Wow. They
aren’t that expensive either. Just what
we needed for a group lunch.
Nine of us crowded into a kind of small meeting room, eating
pizzas and drinking cokes (no beer… that would have been great!), and watching
the Learn to Speak Spanish lesson projected onto a wall. I can see how it’s easier to learn a language
this way, because they have pictures of people doing things, printed words
describing what they are doing, and a voice speaking the printed words. But .. no English anywhere. It’s actually a matter of guesswork at first,
and then you kind of get the hang of it.
Or not.
In case you haven’t seen this program, I’ll describe it to
you. Let’s say the first picture is one
woman sitting at a table with a plate of food, and she is about to take a bite
of something…. Let’s say she’s eating mashed potatoes and gravy. And the words above her spell out, well ….
Great, now you’re going to know I didn’t learn anything! Haha.
So, I’ll make up my own words. OK,
so the words above the picture could be “La Foofie Chowa Galooba” and what it
means is “Lady eating potatoes”… ‘La foofie’ being ‘the lady’… and ‘Chowa Galooba’
being ‘eating potatoes.’ So at first you
aren’t sure of the meaning of any of the words because nobody is telling you…
you have to guess.
The next picture on the screen is a picture of a little girl
eating some ice cream, and the words above the picture are “La Girlie chowa Coldie
La Creama”… and because you’re good at guessing, you realize that maybe “La
Girlie” means the little girl (ah, it’s just so easy, isn’t it?), and “Coldie
La Creama” just has to be ‘ice cream.’
Wow. Is this fun or what? So
you’ve already figured out that ‘chowa’ must mean eating or, chowing down. Hmmm.
Off to a good start.
Then they show a picture of a man running down the street
carrying a bag, and the words “Hombre skooching ala dribble” and you have heard
the word ‘hombre’ before so you figure that’s got to mean ‘man.’ But what does ‘skooching ala dribble’ mean? Well, maybe ‘skooching’ means running but
what’s with the ‘ala dribble’ part?
Could that mean ‘package’?? Or is it about to rain? Or maybe he’s on his way home with something
for dinner and he’s actually drooling while he’s running? Drooling.. Dribble… could be. That would also
tie in with the first two pictures that had to do with food. I sense a theme here!
There is a fourth picture.
Oh yes, there is. This one has
three women in it, and they are all running wildly up a mountain path, waving
big spoons above their heads. They
aren’t dressed in running clothes. One
is wearing jeans and a tee shirt, the second is wearing red pants with a blue
jacket and purple shoes (must be a rock star), and the third is wearing a
baseball uniform that is way too big for her, and 6 inch heels. What are they thinking dressing this
way? I noticed that not one of them
bothered to accessorize!
The words written above this picture are “Las (aha! That means there is more than one!) Foofies
(aha again!) mit a skooching (this is just way too easy) in der (somehow this
is beginning to sound German) Frangily Cantukas while-ski (a little Russian
sounding here) clanking muy muy whiskey.”
… Hmm, “Las Foofies mit a skooching in der frangily cantukas while-ski
clanking muy muy whiskey.” I’m just
guessing now, but I think it means that the women are running in really silly
clothes after drinking a lot of whiskey.
I could be wrong, but then again I could be close to right.
I think the theme here had to do with consuming things: food, drink, and who knows what was in the
bag the man was carrying. Maybe it
wasn’t food. Maybe he had just bought
his dog some toys and was running home play with him. I’m pretty sure the dog’s name was Jake. Or maybe that was the cat… no, I’m pretty
sure Jake was the dog. Jake is just a
big ole dog that loves the man. Let’s
name the man. Let’s call him Kevin. Wait!
Let’s call him Paul. Hombre Paul. But let’s leave Paul for now, he needs to get
home.
Learning a new language really can be fun and easy. We are planning to do this again.
