Thursday, September 23, 2010

I'm losing my ability to speak English

It's true. I'm definitely losing my ability to speak English. The other day I was talking to an American friend and I asked him to "pass me the direction" of a place where we were going to meet up. What I meant was "send me the address", which in Spanish is "pasame la dirección". Not good, not good. I have frequently made the mistake of saying "For me" when I mean to say "I think" or "In my opinion". In Spanish, they say "Para mi" (literally - "for me") to give an opinion. Yet again, not good.
I think part of the problem is that, aside from my job, I don't often speak in English here. This is a double-edged sword --- on one hand I love that my Spanish is improving a ton. On the other, it's a little alarming that an English teacher is starting to speak in Spanglish. In my job, I speak English with non-native speakers of English-- they make a lot of mistakes. However, I've been teaching many of my students for so long that I always understand what they mean to say, and even worse, I've begun to internalize some of their most common errors. For me, this is not a good sign...

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