Thursday, August 2, 2012
Social Constructive Perspective
This post was rather challenging for me to write. After reading the example on page 29 many times I was starting to fully understand this concept. I am not sure If my example is an accurate example of it but I think it is. In my culture I speak Spanish all day everyday, we have words and ideas that do not translate over which is confusing for those who are just learning to speak Spanish to understand what is going on. Huevos for example directly translates into eggs. For people just learning to speak Spanish and does not come from a Spanish speaking culture, they would only say huevos when talking about breakfast foods or ingredients in baked goods. However, in my culture and other Spanish speaking culture we throw around the word huevos in another context. When we say it, we could be talking about eggs or we could be frustrated and saying darn it or say it as "balls". This is a direct thought which can cause common misunderstanding between two cultures. It is words like these which can lead to success in my culture but can lead to miscommunication for others trying to be part of this culture. These are words and thoughts which is not common knowledge to everyone and can contribute to a lack of success to those who are not familiar with these words.
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I thought your post was hilarious because as a non-native Spanish speaker, I made those mistakes while learning. For me however, the social constructive in relation to Spanish immediately brings to mind the subjunctive tense. In English, we do not use the subjunctive as often (if at all) as in Spanish. One of my favorite concepts from Spanish that doesn’t exist in English is that of cause/fault. In Spanish when you want to say, “something fell” or “it broke”, the direct translation in English would be for example, “the bowl broke itself”. To me this was such an interesting cultural, as well as language and communication difference to learn. The causality of an accident is directed at a inanimate object instead of accepted by the culprit. It’s situations such as this which show us the way in which social constructive are created not only through culture but through language as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing, hope you have a great weekend!
I, too, thought your post was HILARIOUS! I know exactly what you mean about the same word having different meanings; words like these would make it especially hard to teach non-natives how to speak Spanish. Huevos was a perfect example for words with double meanings. There are several words in Spanish that have double meaning. For example a penca can mean the prickly leaf of a cactus or similar plant or it can also mean a leather strap to whip convicts. I agree that words like this do contribute in the lack of success to those who do not know these words.
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