Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts

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...