Friday, March 16, 2018

Lost in translation

Wesley's budding bilingualism is not without its malaprops.  Most often, he back-translates things he is saying in English from the more familiar Spanish.  Given that the word for in and on (en) and the word for at and to (a) are the same in Spanish, prepositions are particularly tricky.  As Spanish uses a lot of articles where we don't in English, he is also prone to putting an extra "the" in front of many things.  Some examples:

-"I want to go at the home."

-"It fell in the floor."

-"I'm touching the nose."

All of this is said in a slight Mexican accent.  He will put an "e" sound before all words starting with "s" much like many native Spanish speakers.  Thus, the snowcats we saw at Tahoe became "Esnowcats."

Thursday, March 8, 2018