Productivity

[sophiechild]

Well, yesterday was a rather productive day, at least by Spain standards. I paid my internet bill, successfully talked to the post office guy and sent things by mail, made more porgress on the thanksgiving planning, and took my first test in Spain. I'm pretty sure I passed the test, but if I didn't, I'd need to give up on life becuase the class is

Comments

[sophiechild]

coming from Oklahoma, it's really weird, but here it is very normal for spaniards to leave town for the weekend. I guess I'm just doing what the spanirds do...

[adamtheamazing]

Around here, we have people approach us and start conversations with us in English because they want to practice.

I have had the following conversation several times.

Random stranger who has sat next to me at the browsing center or pulled even with me as I am weaving through traffic on my cycle: "Where are you from?"
Me: "USA."
Him (invariably a him): "Which state?"
Me:"Oklahoma."
Him: [Confused look. He thought the USA consisted entirely of California, New York and Texas.] "Okaloma."
Me: "Yeah. Where are you from?"
Him: "Here. Madurai. What do you think of India?"
Me: "Very warm. What do you think of India?"
Him: "Oh, it's nice place. Friendly people."
Me: "Nice meeting you. Bye!"

Of course, that's only around here. On tour I usually said "Russia."

[sophiechild]

like how random Indian man had really good grammar except for his pronunciation of Oklahoma. Are they usually that good?

People here don't know where Oklahoma is either. When I tell them, the next thing I immediately ask is, "Do you know where that is?" Most don't so I tell them it is the state Just north of Texas.

[adamtheamazing]

Hahaha. I guess that's what Oklahoma is doomed to be until the empire falls . . .

They don't have grammar like that most of the time -- sometimes because they think I understand Indian English, sometimes because they aren't sure of any systemic rules, Indian, US or otherwise. But they've all memorized certain exchanges. As a matter of fact, sometimes nervous school children will have whole conversations with you in English before you have a chance to say a word.

"Hi how are you I'm fine what is your name I'm Lakshmi.*"

*90% of women in India are named Lakshmi. True fact.

[sophiechild]

Ah formulaic phrases! We studied them in my acquistion of a foreign language class, and right now there is a big debate going on about whether formulaic utterances lead to the creation of creative syntactic rules, or are neurologically processed in a fundamentally different way. I had my test in that class on tuesday, and i think I got that question right.