March 12, 2001
DOWN HOME:
At least he's bilingual
at the dinner table
___Buenos dias, un lector el Estandarte Bautista. I think that's what I meant to say, anyway. Good morning, Baptist Standard reader.
___Every Friday, the Baptist Standard staff takes off on a journey of uncertain destination. We're trying to learn to speak Spanish. If we all work until we're 95, don't take any longweekends and never go on vacation, we just might make it.
MARV KNOX
Editor
___This idea has been rumbling around for more than five years, since I moved back home to Texas and realized I made one of the great mistakes in my life when I was a freshman in college and dropped out of Spanish 101.
___"Boy, I wish I hadn't quit that Spanish course," I'd say. Or "Do you realize how much better I could do this job if I could speak Spanish?" I'd ask.
___Finally, Mark Wingfield, our managing editor, picked up the phone and called a company that specializes in teaching businesspeople how to speak other languages. I'm not sure if he really wants to speak Spanish or if he really wants to shut me up.
___Anyway, the company dispatches Senora Claudia over to our office every Friday morning in a valiant attempt to teach nine of us to speak Spanish. After three weeks, we can count, name about a dozen colors and say the Spanish words for "pencil" (lapiz), "newspaper" (periodico), "wall" (pared) and maybe 20 other eclectically unrelated words.
___I've been intending to look ahead in our Spanish textbook (Espanol primer libro) to see when we're going to study food.
___I already know how to say "please" (por favor) and every really, really important word in the language--enchiladas, rellenos, fajitas, frijoles, tortilla, guacamole. So, now all I need to learn is how to say "pass me the," and I'll never starve on either side of the Rio Grande.
___Besides learning the language bit by bit, we're gaining insights into the culture that has been wed to Texas for centuries. And as closely as Hispanic and Anglo cultures have been entertwined in the past, we will be bound even tighter in the future. The challenges are as daunting as learning a new language and as bright as understanding a new way to think.
___When I get to thinking I'm hot on the Spanish trail, I go home and practice on Lindsay and Molly, who have taken Spanish in public school for years. They laugh and correct my West Texas pronunciation of Spanish words--until they get tired and tell me, in English, to give it a break.
___Some day, I'll know how to speak Spanish for a full meal and talk about more than the food. And in that day, I'll enjoy an even closer kinship to a vital part of the Texas Baptist family, my Hispanic hermanas y hermanos.
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