English as an inherently arrogant language

One thing I've learned about the English language from learning other languages is that English, inherently, comes across as being arrogant. Many phrases in English, for instance, talk about the other person, whereas in other languages, the phrases are more modest. For instance, the biggest phrase I've noticed is the way to say "you're welcome".

In English, we say "you are welcome"...meaning that we are taking pride in what we've done and we put ourselves first. In Spanish, the phrase is "de nada", which is literally translated to: "It's nothing." In almost every language I've learned, it is this same way. In Mandarin Chinese, for instance, you say, "dui bu qi", which means that it was no problem or don't worry about it. The same phrase is said in Cantonese Chinese, but it's said as: "mn sai ha hay". It also translates to "don't mention it". We, of course, have these same phrases in English, but our default way to tell somebody "you're welcome" is to simply say "you are welcome". We put ourselves first, even in our language and choice of words. Japanese also translates from "please do not worry about it, or please don't mention it."

This got me thinking: what other phrases in English are "arrogant" compared to the other languages around the world? One of the most fascinating things to me was in Mandarin. Receiving compliments in English, we automatically say, "oh, thank you." But in Mandarin, it's very common to say, "nali, nali" which means, "where, where?" It's considered to be a bad thing to even accept a compliment in Mandarin. In this manner, the Chinese say something is "not bad" when they mean that it is in fact pretty good.

Even saying "goodbye" in English is different. In Spanish, the phrase is "adios". Literally broken down linguistically, "a" means "to" and "dios" means "God". Interesting, isn't it? They also use "hasta luego" which means "until later" as one of their more common ways of saying goodbye. This same phrase is echoed in Mandarin, where the default way to say goodbye is "zai jian". "Zai" means at or until and "jian" means to see. Literally, it's translated as "to see again". In English, the phrase is more definite, more final, than in any other language that I know, at least.

See if you can find some other examples similar to this! That's all for now, but it's something I'd been curious about and when I actually thought about it, it was pretty interesting.

 The first is a picture of the house where I'm staying. The people of Ecuador are very friendly and they love to let the sun shine into their houses. There are many windows because of this in their houses!

This is an example of a street in Cayambe, though it's at the end of the busy street so there aren't too many people around. You can see the mural in the middle of the intersection, which is very common place here. There is also the picture of the mountains in the background. Que bonita!

And this is the front of the house; this is the gate that I go out of every morning. It's definitely a beautiful sight!

That's all for now; I thought I would put up a few pictures for everyone to see!

Ordering Chinese...in Spanish

This past weekend I had the chance to walk around Cayambe more and just get a better feel for the town itself. There's two main roads, including the Panamericano (the Pan-American highway) that goes into Quito. I live on one of the main roads, called Ascazubi. The other main road is more like the two-way highway that we are familiar with. There's a dividing line between and many gas stations as well as popular restaurants. There's even a Ford dealership there!! It's the little things that remind you of home that get you excited, right? :D

There's many places to buy biscochos, which are a specialty here in Cayambe. I guess tourists come from all over Ecuador to try the biscochos here in Cayambe. They are really just little biscuits, but the people here eat them with dulce con leche (caramel sauce). I've yet to try them, but I've heard they are the best here in Cayambe. I did stumble across a Chinese restaurant, and after inquiring with my co-teachers decided to try it out once I made sure it was reputable and safe to eat in. Staring at a Chinese menu in Spanish was definitely interesting. For the first few minutes, my brain was translating first into Chinese then back into English to figure out what I was looking at. Definitely quite the experience! I was even picturing the Mandarin characters that went with the food before I pictured the English words. I finally decided on chicken with vegetables, which was delicious. Broccoli, carrots, onions with fine white meat chicken and your choice of white or brown rice to go with it. I wound up taking maybe 3/4 of the meal to go because the portions were just the same as they are in China. I wanted to ask for chopsticks, but I hadn't looked up the Spanish word for chopsticks before, and guessed they probably wouldn't know the Chinese word (even though at least one person from the waitstaff appeared to be from China).

This Friday, the students will have the opportunity to make Valentine's Day cards. That should be a lot of fun! And on Tuesday the 14th, we are going to have a Valentine's Day party with all the students. I've seen just about every level of student now, from very early beginner to the student who is nearly done with the course here. It was fascinating to speak with him in class the other day. One of the topics was predicting things in the future, using the tense 'there will be'. He understood immediately and even understood the point of the question. The lesson asked that I ask him, "What do you think will happen in 2050?" his response was something to the effect of: "They say that the end of the world will be in 2012, but I don't believe that. I think it is important to do whatever you like to do regardless of what will happen." It was amazing, and very rewarding for me to see that someone could progress so much in a language in only two years of studying using this particular method. He was only fifteen, so the majority of his exposure to English happened at Wall Street.

False Cognates

So I learned something new in Spanish today. I remember in high school learning that a ´groceria´was a grocery store. Just like, a panaderia is a place where you can buy bread or a ´cafeteria´is a place where you can buy coffee. Or a heladeria is a place where you can buy ice cream. Seems logical, right, if the word for bread is ´pan´and the word for coffee is ´café and the word for ice cream is ´helado´? My co-teachers were helping me fill out a form for official use today and I learned that ´groceria´ is not a cognate for grocery store. I knew that supermercado, or supermarket, is better used here in Ecuador, and definitely refers to what my job was in Meijer. Here, ´groceria´means a stupid person to the people at least in Ecuador. Imagine my surprise! So, don´t refer to Meijer as a ´groceria´, or you will certainly get weird looks! It was a very interesting learning opportunity and I learned yet another false cognate that I never learned in high school. Maybe in some places, ´groceria´translates to grocery store, but here in Ecuador? It only means ´stupid person´. Definitely something I had never learned in high school or college.

I survived my first full day of teaching yesterday and my first week here in Ecuador. I walked around the city more this weekend and discovered that there is a small park nearby, and that the first road that I was on coming from Quito was the Pan American highway, known here as the ´Panamericano.´ I also discovered that many of the students here do not always know each other in classes, so I tried to change that yesterday. We played the game, ¨Three truths and one lie¨and after a bit of explaining and examples, they understood how to play. They were laughing by the end of the class and got to know quite a bit about each other too! It was also good for me to come to know my students as well.

Well, that´s all for now. They´re doing construction on the road outside of my apartment so it wouldn´t be very pretty if I were able to take a picture of the surrounding area now (plus, it´s going to rain again. It always seems to be overcast in the middle of the day when I have free time here. I do have some rainy pictures that I can upload when I´m back on my netbook rather than a school computer.)

Friday!

So, I've nearly survived my first week in Ecuador. I've explored a little bit more of the city and have discovered that they are definitely more modern than China was. You can find many things here that I never would have been able to find in China. I think the biggest thing is that there is a Nestle factory on the same street where I live. Anything Nestle is very common for the people here. It's also popular for them to wear name brands like Abercrombie or Aeropostale, but they are expensive here. They'd probably cost $20 or $30 more than what the same thing would cost in the States. On the other hand, everything else is very cheap. Taxi rides cost around $1 to go some place. You can buy a full 3 course meal (consisting of soup, a main course, juice to drink and a salad) for around $3 or $4 depending on the shop.

Hot water is hard to come by in Ecuador, or so I hear. I'm lucky that the house where I live gets hot water, you just have to let it run for maybe five or ten minutes and then it gets warm. They wash and dry their own clothes here, too. It's more common, but the other option is sending your clothes in to a dry cleaner of sorts to get them cleaned. After living in China, I'd say it's easier for me to just wash my own clothes with laundry detergent and hot water! It gets warm in the middle of the day, so as long as they are drying by around eleven or so, clothes will dry very quickly.

Everything is very laid back here, for the most part. Students are expected to arrive on time or reschedule their classes. However, I found out about ten o'clock yesterday morning that I was teaching my first lesson. It was only a conversational lesson, but it was very informational for me. I let the students grow accustomed to talking to me by letting them talk about Ecuador. They have quite a bit of knowledge about their country, though perhaps the most fascinating thing that reminded me a lot of China was when they introduced the topic of their president. Most of them said they liked him because they liked how he looked. One girl even said she liked his eyes and that's why she liked him. The older student who is probably middle-aged stated that she thought he was stupid, but when I asked why, she couldn't explain it. I'll have to try asking them in Spanish some time to see if they really couldn't just describe it in English, or if that was really what their opinions were.

Today I learn more about the administrative side of things, but it will be very laid back in general. And tomorrow is the weekend! Maybe I will try to find the "Middle of the Earth" here in Cayambe already.

Vivo en la mitad del mundo ahora

I arrived safely in Cayambe after a very long day of traveling Monday evening around ten at night. The road from Quito to Cayambe was through and down a mountain, where it was very windy. The driver was a friend of Juan Carlos, the manager of the center where I´m teaching. She was very confident in what she was doing and wasn´t afraid at all of passing on curves or going around trucks. It was pretty intense!

After what seemed like a long drive, I arrived at my apartment. Pictures will come soon when I have a few minutes to take some. For now, though, the apartment is very open. There are a lot of windows and the landlady that I live with has a mini garden in the middle of her house. The area where I´m at seems quite safe and modern, though it´s customary here not to go outside after dark. It´s one of the reasons why my apartment is directly across the street from the school, so that way they don´t have to worry about me walking to my apartment when it´s dark outside.

In the very close background, I can see all kinds of mountains. The volcano Cayambe is in front of the town, and my apartment is facing it. In many ways, Cayambe and Ecuador are similar to China. Cars have the right of way on the streets, not people. You have to be careful of what you carry when you´re walking as pick-pockets are very common. It´s quite typical to see motorcycles dashing in and out of cars and if the road is blocked, cars will drive up the sidewalk to pass. The streets aren´t made of cement, but they´ve got blocks and designs on them...kind of like old England. There´s even a major street near me that´s just dirt. There are crosswalk lights, but the cars don´t follow them at all.

I live about maybe ten minutes from the actual equator, called here ´la mitad del mundo´or the middle of the earth. The people in Cayambe are proud to say that the actual equator is here, where as the one in Quito is more for tourism and is about an hour off the actual mark.

Well, that´s all for now! I´ll update later with some pictures of the area!

Adios!