Fun with Spanish

Allison at Olive Plants inspired me with her Rosetta Stone post.

I've always had an interest in teaching the girls a foreign language at a young age because the young child's mind is said to absorb information like a thirsty sponge.

However, it is also said that no matter how fluently you learn to read a language, if you don't regularly use that language in conversation, chances are not good you will ever fluently SPEAK it. For that reason and others, the girl's foreign language instruction has been rather spotty.
I was glad to get Sissy in a group Spanish class this year.

Still, we've had a good time 'playing around' at learning Spanish over the last couple of years.
Here's how it started.



Peanut received a free book in the mail every month for awhile and one month, to my delight the book she got was bilingual. It was called "Ana Cultiva Manzanas" and was about an apple farmer named Annie. It told how Apple Farmer Annie grew apple trees and how she picked ripe apples and all the things she did with her apples. She made applesauce and apple pie and apple juice and she loaded her truck up with apples and took them to the farmer's market where she sold apples. And because the word "apples" is used about twenty times on each page, and the word "manzanas" is used about twenty times on each of the Spanish pages, it was easy to figure out that "manzanas" is Spanish for "apples".



I know, my brilliance is blinding. Anyway that little book sparked an idea to check out Hispanic books in the children's section of the library. I think we've done it a total of three times in the last two years. Remember, I said it was spotty. We've checked out very simple children's books in Spanish, books that we either own in English, or have read so many times that we don't need to own it because we have it memorized . Knowing the English version ver batim, along with the repetitive nature of children's book's makes it not too difficult to translate individual words.



For example, in the book , "Eres tu mi Mama?" (Are You My Mother?) we read:

El gatito no era su madre. We also see a picture of a kitten.

On another page we read:

La gallina no era su madre. Here we see a picture of a hen.

And suddenly you're Einstein. " Oh my GOSH! " you say excitedly. " El gatito means THE KITTEN!! And la gallina means THE HEN!! Isn't that exciting , girls?!?

"Girls?"

You look around and realize you're alone in the room reading a book written for a five year-old.

And your teenage son is standing in the doorway staring at you with an expression of mixed amusement and concern.

We have another Spanish book checked out right now -- "Huevos Verdes Con Jamon".

OK quick, what's the English title? By the way, it really bugs me that I can't type an accent mark or an upside down question mark when I need to.

Time's up! The English title is...................."Green Eggs and Ham".

"Ese Juan Ramon, ese Juan Ramon! No me gusto ese Juan Ramon!"

(falls over laughing) I just love that line.