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Nov. 14th, 2002 04:11 pm
El meu català és merda!
Well, that was humbling.
I expected it to be, but that only goes so far in mitigating my embarrassment. You see, some months ago now, I cataloged a book in Catalan that a professor had requested. For fun, when it came time to notify her, I composed the e-mail in Catalan, too. As I expected, this got a thrilled response--it's just one of those languages that one doesn't expect a foreigner to speak. She asked if I'd like to get together sometime for a chat about literature; I warned her that it would have to be a short chat, since my Catalan is so poor. It was never great to begin with and I never get any practice these days.
It took so many weeks to schedule a rendezvous that she may have forgotten the warning. To make things worse, she invited someone else along, another non-native speaker who's interested in Catalan but doesn't speak it. So he spoke Castilian, I spoke Catalan, and the professor spoke both--though mostly the former. All the code-switching tripped me up. I was completely forgetting how to say basic things like "did" and "ask for" and I kept introducing castellanismes like "muller" and the simple past. Quina cagada!
They were both very nice about it and didn't evince the least impatience with my hesitations, stumblings, and mumblings. (When I get nervous about my lack of competence, I tend to talk too fast, as if that will give an impression of fluency.) But I wonder if we'll really get together again or not. The guy, btw, was gay como un ganso (or whatever the equivalent expression is).
I expected it to be, but that only goes so far in mitigating my embarrassment. You see, some months ago now, I cataloged a book in Catalan that a professor had requested. For fun, when it came time to notify her, I composed the e-mail in Catalan, too. As I expected, this got a thrilled response--it's just one of those languages that one doesn't expect a foreigner to speak. She asked if I'd like to get together sometime for a chat about literature; I warned her that it would have to be a short chat, since my Catalan is so poor. It was never great to begin with and I never get any practice these days.
It took so many weeks to schedule a rendezvous that she may have forgotten the warning. To make things worse, she invited someone else along, another non-native speaker who's interested in Catalan but doesn't speak it. So he spoke Castilian, I spoke Catalan, and the professor spoke both--though mostly the former. All the code-switching tripped me up. I was completely forgetting how to say basic things like "did" and "ask for" and I kept introducing castellanismes like "muller" and the simple past. Quina cagada!
They were both very nice about it and didn't evince the least impatience with my hesitations, stumblings, and mumblings. (When I get nervous about my lack of competence, I tend to talk too fast, as if that will give an impression of fluency.) But I wonder if we'll really get together again or not. The guy, btw, was gay como un ganso (or whatever the equivalent expression is).