Posts from the “Questions” Category

The Bluff

03/14/12

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” – Confucius You must learn to see opportunity in every time every time your assumptions are challenged and life turns the tables on you. Oh, I just realized I made a typo on that last sentence–I meant wife turns the tables on you. For the four and a half years my beautiful bride and I have been parents, I’ve been following the tacit plan that our children will go to a Spanish immersion school. As a non-stereotypical male who’s not, however, free of a few stereotypically male traits, my modus operandi when it comes to big decisions about…

Categories: Questions, Reflections, Trivial Occurrences

Spanglish

11/18/09

Americans think it’s the funniest thing to mock-speak Spanish by just adding an “o” to the end of English words (e.g. “take me in your el truck-o to the next el town-o”). And guess what? My sons are Americans so it’s kind of naive to expect any different from them. It must be something in the water… Come to think of it, Colombians are just as bad — we add “ation” to the end of Spanish words to turn them into English ones (e.g. amigo (friend) = “amigation”) I’m kidding, of course. What I want to share is simply the dreaded reappearance of Spanglish in my boy Gabriel’s vernacular. In earlier posts I wrote about how very early on, when he was just beginning…

Categories: Questions, Trivial Occurrences

No Use for Dora the Explorer

10/23/09

Just to be clear, I think Dora and Diego are about the best thing that has happened to Hispanic people in this country since Ricky Martin made the entire nation shake its bon-bon the whole Summer of 1999. But it has been interesting to see where the concept of Dora and Diego fails when applied to the way I’m raising my sons. My older son now has a very clear idea of English and Spanish as two separate systems of communication used by two different groups of people, and he understands that some people can speak both (like, say, himself – duh!). But in order to secure the best chance that in the future he won’t all of a sudden want to start speaking…

Categories: Questions, Reflections

Big Boy

06/05/09

Like any other decent celebrity, I primarily thank my fans for giving me the energy and the encouragement to keep going. So it is to all of those fans around the world (i.e. my wife and my best friend in Colorado), that I want to offer my apologies for resting on my laurels and not keeping up with the blog. As you know, I’ve been busy raising a child and preparing for another one. But enough about my hiatus from the limelight. Let’s catch up, shall we? My boy keeps growing strong, smart, and handsome and continues to teach me things about myself as a man, as a father, and as a language teacher. He is now 22 months old and his vocabulary in…

Categories: Questions, Trivial Occurrences

The Small Divide

03/06/09

During the three years my wife and I have been together, she has learned a lot of Spanish, but she doesn’t speak it fluently. We both understand and take seriously the need for her to be comfortable with Spanish if we want to be effective as we can be at raising our children bilingual. But life is busy, and having an 18-month old boy and another one on the way leaves hardly any time to keep up with laundry, let alone commit to the major undertaking that is learning a new language as an adult. So we worry a little bit. We certainly haven’t abandoned our plans to help her learn the language as fully as she can, but day after day, we seem…

Categories: Questions, Reflections

Ain’t Ain’t A Word

02/18/09

I guess you could say I’m proud of my blue collar/working class background. Of course, when I was a youth I often felt wretchedly disadvantaged, especially at that age when it becomes important to wear certain brand jeans and sneakers to be considered a worthwhile human being or a worthy suitor to the neighborhood’s prettiest girls. But now that I’m a relatively mature adult, I am deeply grateful not only for the efforts made by my parents to support us but also for the lessons that my working class environment thought me. Of course, this website is only partially about self-congratulating for how remarkable I am. My point here is that because of my background, I grew up speaking a certain brand of Spanish…

Categories: Questions, Reflections