Spanish – The Viva

I was proud that I wasn’t at all nervous (though I had planned on saying ‘Estoy bien pero un poco nerviosa’ if the teacher asked ‘Que Tal’!) before the viva till my brother ruthlessly pointed out that it was because not much depended on the outcome. Sadly, he is right (as younger brothers so rarely are!). So apart from going through the notes once and rehearsing a few questions, I didn’t do much by way of preparation.

When I reached the classroom at 10am, a handful of students were sitting poring over their notes. The good news was that the 9am batch wasn’t still done with their viva. Oh no! I had plans to go to the VJTI exhibition after this. I had deliberately not brought any notes with me – in stark contrast to my student days when I could be seen going through the notes till the last possible moments. Experience has taught me that the last-minute studying doesn’t make any difference to what I remember or don’t during the exam. So I sat reading a James Patterson novel (yes, I have rejoined the library this month) in a corner of the classroom till a student who sometimes sat next to me during classes came to me and asked me to help her practice for the viva.

So for the next 15 minutes or so we went through the whole drill – Como te llamas (what is your name), que haces (what do you do), donde vives (where do you stay), como es tu casa (how is your home), que hora es (what time is it), que dia es hoy (what day is today), cual es la fecha hoy (what date is today), cuando es tu cumpleanos (when is your birthday), cual es tu numero de telefono (what is your telephone number), como es tu amiga (how is your friend), a ti que te gusta (what do you like), cuantos anos tienes (how old are you) etc. Then we made each other recite 1 to 20 numbers, names of months and days of weeks, names of 5 foods, garments, fruits, vegetables, colors, objects and places in a city. It was good fun!

We were almost done with the revision when we heard some discussion at the back of the classroom. A student who had just finished his viva had been cornered by the rest of the gang and grilled about what he was asked. He had rattled off a few questions when the teacher walked in from another classroom where she was conducting the viva and threatened to cut the marks of everyone for this. For a moment, I wondered if I am back in my Engineering college :)

I was restless as the clock began inching towards 10:30. Just then the teacher walked in again carrying a bunch of papers. These were our written papers from last weekend. She handed mine with a ‘Muy Bien’ – I scored 72.5 out of 80. But I didn’t get much chance to inspect it at that that time because the teacher asked if anyone was ready for their oral and I put up my hand – not because of any over-confidence but simply because I was in hurry to get it done.

When we were seated in the other classroom, the teacher asked me to choose one sheet out of the two that she had and describe the places in it. I think I did okay on that front. She asked me what I was wearing, what do I do, how old I am, what kind of a house do I live in and so on. I think the whole thing lasted for 10 minutes at best. Then she asked me if I was done viewing the paper. When I said no so she asked me to take a look and I headed for one of the benches on the left.

Upon close inspection I wasn’t surprised at my mistakes – I had figured them out while practicing for viva. I had lost 2-3 marks in the audio section, as expected. I would not have lost 3 marks if I had remembered that ‘hay’ goes with ‘un/una’, and not ‘esta’. One mark was lost because I was too dense to figure out that ‘a veces’ means ‘at times’ and not ‘siempre’. I couldn’t understand why one of the answers was marked wrong though – it asked to fill ‘esta’ or ‘es’ when talking about a shop that was new in the locality. Since the shop was ‘new’ now and wasn’t going to be new forever, I had put in ‘esta’ but that answer was marked as wrong.

Anyways, the teacher was busy with viva so I decided not to disturb her with my query. One mark wasn’t going to make or break my career. Besides I was getting late already so I handed her the paper (we were not allowed to keep it with us but I guess I should have taken a photo of the score-sheet) and walked out the classroom.

As mentioned before, I am not going to attend the sessions beginning in March (Saturday 7pm-9pm and Sunday 9am-11am for 2.5 months at least is not my cuppa tea!). That means if I am serious about giving DELE A1 in the second half of 2015, I will have to find a way to prepare on my own.

As I walked out the college, I felt a little bit sad that I won’t be coming back next Sunday. It had been a pain to get up early on Sunday but it had also been fun to be back in the classroom. Sure, it is a tiny step in the goal that had been sitting on the to-do list since eons but it is a step. And I hope it is one of the many that will foll

Hasta La Vista!

Spanish – Written Exam

The more I studied (and I really didn’t study that much!) the more I became ‘un poco nerviosa’. :) I knew that I am doomed by the ‘Audio’ part of the exam. Though I was able to make sense of the transcriptions of the ‘Audio’ samples meant for the DELE A1 exam preparation, they were like Greek and Latin to me (!) when I just heard them. :(

So I went into the classroom with more than a little bit of trepidation. During my student days, I could be seen going through the troublesome sections of the notes in the exam hall. But these days I prefer not to look at them. Still, the sight of so many people poring through their notes has an effect on you so I fished out my notebook and went through the irregular verbs section one more time.

The exam started a bit later than 9am. The first part was of course ‘Audio’. The teacher forgot to attach the speakers to the music system and as a result had to play the recordings thrice before she realized her mistake. Only the first section – that dealt with the numbers – was audible to me. The 2nd section talked about timings and I could get some parts. The last section was a total washout. It talked about people, their places and occupation. The teacher had told us to familiarize ourselves with the cities in Latin American countries but I had forgotten all about it till the time I was standing at the bus stop on the day of the exam! :) I wrote what I could and left the rest to God!

The written part of the exam was okay, I guess though prudence (and experience!) tells me to wait till the results are out. There was reading comprehension, grammar and a couple of images that we were asked to describe. Let’s see.

We have Orals on coming Sunday. Judging by the fact that the teacher has allocated one hour for a group of 8-9 students, each of us cannot be grilled for more than 10 minutes :) My judgement hour starts at 10am. Hope I don’t get all tongue-tied.

We were also told that the second part of the course is going to start in March – Saturday 7pm-9pm and Sunday 9am-11am. Total 40 hours i.e. 10 weeks = 2.5 months. Totally not possible for me and that’s a shame. The teacher said that there isn’t much grammar left to be taught but emphasis will be on vocabulary and practicing for the ‘audio’ part. After this, we should be able to face DELE A1 level. That means I need to figure out how I can prepare for the same on my own.

As I handed my paper to the teacher, I realized that I won’t be seeing majority of these faces again. That’s sad. Here’s wishing them luck – for the oral as well as for the rest of their lives. Buena Suerte :)

Spanish - The Final Class

I am sure none of us students knew that this was to be the last class of the program. That's because we were told that we would be having classes all through January. And some portions of the book haven't been covered yet. In fact, I had begun to worry that the classes might go on well into February till the teacher declared the exam dates.

But I should have guessed yesterday - there was no new material covered. We covered the homework during the first half hour of the class. And then completed a variety of exercises based on what we have learnt so far. One of the exercises - the one in which two friends are talking about the fiance of one of them - had everyone laughing because the photo of the gentleman in question didn't match up to his description of being 'guapo', as per the entire female population of the class.

There were 2-3 audio sessions, acutely reminding me once again - as if I need to be - that I am going to have a hard time deciphering it during exam. The teacher gave the paper pattern - in the written exam, there are going to be 4 sections - reading comprehension, audio comprehension, one section containing questions about the grammar and another containing images which we will need to describe. Each of these sections will be of 20 marks and we have to score at least 10 in each. Plus there will be an oral on the following weekend - 20 marks. We have to score at least 10 in that as well. I have to check out the sample papers from the internet.

It was then that the teacher said that we will next meet for written exam and that there will be no class next weekend. I felt relieved and sad at the same time. Relieved because lately it had been getting increasingly tiresome to drag myself outta bed every Sunday morning. But sad because it had felt good to be in college again, sitting amongst young students, learning new things. All that has now come to an end.

I looked around to take a quick head count. There were about 22 of us in the class - more or less the same number since past couple of weeks. We were about 35 when the class had started. So almost 60% of the class stuck to their guns and saw the thing right to its very end. I looked around again. I was going to see most of them again during written exam. But since the class was going to be divided into groups for the orals and each group would be called at a different time, I was unlikely to see most of them again after that. Our lives would take different paths. We would go through our share of good/bad experiences. But I am sure that each one of us would have fond memories of this class. The student population might not think much about it at this time because I am sure most of them have had enough of classroom sessions. But the 4-5 professionals surely would. Then a few years would roll by and the students would become professionals with a couple of years of work experience under their belt. It is then that they will think about this, and all other classes, with a tinge of nostalgia.

So here's to my companeros de clase - Buena Suerte!

Spanish - Class XXI

If I glance at my notes from the class, it looks as if we didn't do much - considering the fact that we have just 2 more classes to go. And yet we were occupied for the entire duration of 2 hours.

The first part of the class was of course spent in going through the homework as always. After that we learnt about Los Adjetivos Posesivos - mine (mi), your (su) etc. in their masculine/feminine as well as singular/plural forms. A couple of exercises involving their usage followed. Then the 3rd group of irregular verbs was covered - ER. I get 'tense'd thinking about how I will remember verb forms for the main 3 tenses - Past, Present and Future - for regular + 3 groups of irregular verbs (with their o -> ue, e -> i and e -> ie variations). I dare not think about the rest of the tenses. :-(

The last part of the class was reserved for listening exercises. We listened to 2 audios containing conversations carried out in restaurants. Even when I had the transcripts of the dialogues in front
of me it was difficult to pick out what was being said.

I am very worried about the listening comprehension and Viva part of the exam. :-(

Despite that, I must say that it gives me immense joy when I come across a Spanish word that I recognize. A couple of days back, I found a Spanish poem in one article. Just for fun, I tried to understand it. Of course, I didn't understand it fully but when I checked the translation I found that I had got the gist of it. Not bad after doing the basic course, not bad at all!

And the credit for it goes to the teacher - Gracias Maestra!

Spanish - Class XX

Whoa.....it was as if you get into water expecting it not to rise beyond chest-level, only to find that it is deep enough to sink a dozen of you stacked one on top of the other. I am talking about the usage of irregular verbs in Spanish. It started with 'Tener' and I expected such verbs to be an exception but it looks like they could be numerous enough to make the cut as 'the rule'.

So we have verbs changing o -> ue and e -> ie in all 3 forms - 'ar', 'er' and 'ir'. What's more you have a 3rd category in 'ir', verbs where e -> i! Fortunately, only 2 verbs fall into o -> ue group of 'ir' verbs
- dormir (to sleep) and morir (to die) and by the time we were done learning about all these, I seriously didn't know whether it would be better to sleep or to die :-)

The luxury of having only 2 verbs in the change group doesn't extend to other groups. When we asked the teacher, if the other groups contained only the verbs mentioned by her she replied (with a wicked grin, creo que) in the negative. One of us mustered enough courage to ask how we mere mortals could figure out if a verb is regular or irregular. 'You will have to remember' was the answer. I think my chances of being able to converse in Spanish just dropped by a mighty 20%. :-(

As if this wasn't enough, now it was the turn of the mighty 'Gustar' (to like) and 'Encantar' (to like a lot). Both can be used with an object or a verb. If used with an object, the conjugation changes as per the plurality of the object whereas a verb should be used without any conjugation. e.g. Gusta el chocolate vs. Gustan los chocolates. If you want to say 'like eating chocolates', it will be 'Gusta comer el chocolate/los chocolates'. There is no 'Gustan' if used with a verb.

I have 4 more classes' worth of knowledge to cram into my already over-crowded tiny brain. Hope I can do it :-)

Spanish - Class XIX

Our Maestra is on the roll. I am having a nasty feeling that by the time February's first weekend rolls in, she is going to pile on a lot of material which most of us will not be able to digest. Till last weekend major part of each class would be spent in revising the homework and the last 30-45 minutes would see us covering new material. But today the revision of the homework was done in thirty minutes flat. And then it was the turn of the new portion.

First, we learnt how to ask for and tell time. 'ये बंबई शहर है, यहा टाईम का मतलब है पैसा' I remembered Nana Patekar from the movie 'Taxi no. 9211' :-) We had learnt numbers from 1 too 100 till now. Today we learnt from 101 till 1000. The teacher asked each one of us to write our own mobile numbers by dividing them in 3 groups of 3 digits each and one lone digit at the end. e.g. a number such as 1234567890 would be 123 456 789 0 and so read as ciento veinti tres cuatrocientos cincuenta y seis setecientos ochenta y nueve cero......I hope. :-) 5-6 students were randomly selected to read out their numbers and the rest of us were supposed to write the numbers down. Finally, we were asked to divide each of the numbers in 5 groups of 2 digits each and tell the teacher. We all had loads of fun doing that and all of us were grinning from ear to ear by the time the exercise was over.

Time for some new vocabulary - lugares en una ciudad like library, post office, press, newspaper stall, theatre and departmental store. And as if all this wasn't enough, in the last 15 minutes of the class we were taught how to ask for and give directions. I just hope the Spaniards are better than Indians when it comes to directions :-)

I have come to realize that when this class ends I am going to miss it. Today morning when I was going through my notes while waiting for the teacher, two students (one of them a senior citizen and another a professional) had their books open and were discussing the homework just like kids. 'Did you get question number 5?', 'What is the meaning of this word?' and so on. It is refreshing and energizing to spend two hours every week in an academic environment, not to mention the fact that I have finally taken baby steps towards my long-cherished dream of learning a foreign language.

As 2014 draws to an end, it is one of the few thoughts that I find immensely comforting.

Spanish - Class XIII

All my dreams of being able to sleep till late on Sunday mornings come January were cruelly dashed by our teacher last weekend in one master stroke - we are going to have classes all through January. She added for good measure that we will have our written final test on first Sunday of February and the orals on the Sunday after that. Man! I dread Vivas :-(

Most of the time (almost 75%) was spent in reviewing homework. In the last half hour, we covered two kinds of irregular verbs - the ones which change e to ie and the ones that change o to ue. Till now, I had made my peace with one ambiguity in Spanish language- which adjectives should be used with SER and which ones with ESTAR. Now I have to wrestle with this bugbear of which verbs are the irregular ones. :-(

Sometimes I wonder if I will forget what I wanted to say in the first place while trying to remember all the relevant grammar rules :-(

Spanish - Class XVII

Finally, it felt as if I am learning something new instead of just doing exercises after exercises. Honestly, I had to scramble to complete the homework last night because I didn't get time to do that over the past week. Unfortunately, only a part of that was covered during today's class.

So, back to the class. So today we learnt about the first irregular verb - Tener i.e. to have/to possess (nope, not the demonic kind, this is not supernatural for Heaven's sake!) and the uses of the same. I sure hope that these irregular verbs do have some method to the madness. If not, I am done for because I am already struggling with the ambiguities of SER and ESTAR. The next one was El Verbo Haber, which, thankfully, has just one conjugation - Hay. A couple of exerices later we read an email and could make sense of most of it :-)

No exam today and I suspect that we won't have one till the last session. I guess it is just the teacher's way of making sure that we do study every week. I ain't complaining. :-)

Spanish - Class XV and XVI

Classes XV and XVI are a bit of a blur now. Probably because we spent most of the time doing exercises from the book. In Class XV, we did learn about the 8 directions. But mostly it was about usage of SER and ESTAR plus a lot of new vocabulary.

I still cannot get the hang of the audio sessions and suspect that many of my classmates are sailing in the same boat. In last class, none of us could figure out the names of the places that were being discussed in the audio and the whole class had burst out laughing.

Oh, I was having one of the worst attacks of cold and cough last week and was secretly hoping that I wouldn't have to talk much in the class. No such luck. The teacher asked me to read one of the exercises and at the end of it I was coughing so bad that I had to get out of the class before the attack subsided. :-(

Cannot believe we are almost at the end of our sessions. I do hope we learn about the tenses before we are done.

Spanish - Class XIV

More revision. More exercises from the book. And in the process, we learnt some new expressions like Estas de acuerdo (do you agree?), Estoy Sola - I am alone and Estoy Bien - I am okay.

We are about 6 classes away from the end of the program. And I am worried about 2 things - one, how to remember which words have the dreaded tildes and two, are we going to learn 'tenses' in this program.

Soy no tiene informacion! :-)

Spanish - Class XIII

I wonder if we will ever see the full quorum of 35 again. The attendance these days is mostly 25-28. I myself sometimes wish the teacher would increase the class duration to 3 hours instead of the normal 2 hours and wrap up the program. :-(

Okay, so the first half was spent in revising things learnt in the past class. The class was divided into groups of 4 and each group asked to describe a personality of its choice to the rest of the class so that they could guess who was being described. I was part of a group where the rest of the members were college girls. We zeroed in on poor Leonardo Da Vinci. A lively discussion ensued on whether he was an Italiano or a Frances. One of the girls said he was French. I was of the opinion that he was Italian. Hell, it has been more than 2 decades since I read about him and his art. But wasn't the plot of the Da Vinci Code set in Vatican? Finally, we consulted the teacher, who, after a second's contemplation, gave the verdict that he was an Italiano. The next hurdle was the word 'Pintor'. Does it mean someone who might use Asian Paints colors to paint the walls or someone who draws paintings which rarely make sense to mere mortals? 'Both' the teacher assured us. I am doubtful about that but for the moment decided not to pursue it further.

So we wrote our 4 lines about him and his painting of a mysterious smiling lady. The class duly guessed it to be the Monalisa and by association the name of our famous personality. We did the same for the rest of the groups. One group had chosen Enrique Iglesias (doesn't Iglesia mean Church in Spanish?) which none of us could guess.

Then we read and made sense of a passage where a person introduces his friends to another. The teacher told us that the exam to be held in first or second week of December would be worth 20 marks and we would be asked to describe a photo. So need to brush up on the vocabulary. Hell,I hope the use of a dictionary is not allowed. I don't have one and don't intend to purchase it anytime soon.

In the second half, we learnt the masculine/feminine and singular/plural form of this, that, that (far distance). Till now, we had done 1 to 20 numbers. Now I know (or think I know!) 21 to 100.

Hmmm.....what is a zero called in Spanish though? Hope I don't find that out when the result of the exam is handed over ;-)

Spanish - Class VIII to X

"Preguntas Con 'SER'" was the topic of the day for class VIII - from rather philosophical sounding Identity based questions like 'Quien Eres?' (Who are you?) to mundane questions related to colors. When the teacher asked me 'De Que Color es el pelo?', I blurted out 'blanco' (white) instead of 'Negro' (black) and everyone had a good laugh. I swear I wasn't thinking about Godrej hair dye :-)

We began class IX with verbs. There are 3 types - the ones ending with 'ar', ones ending with 'er' and the ones ending with 'ir'. So it was hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, hablais, hablan till vivo, vives, vive, vivimos, vivis, viven. The teacher must have thought this was very easy because she piled on quite a bit of vocabulary - mainly adjectives to describe the physical characteristics of a person. Our homework was introducing some Latin American or Spanish personality. I chose Jennifer Lopez. Here goes my description:

Mira, te prsento a una mujer bonita.
Se llama Jennifer Lopez.
Es Estado Unidense.
Vive en Estados Unidos.
Trabaja en Hollywood
Es actriz.
Habla espanol y ingles.
Tiene la buena figura y los ojos oscuros.
Tiene el pelo liso y marron.
Es alta, canosa, morena.

Today was class X (we didn't have class on the Dussera weekend). The teacher mainly revised the verbs taught during the last class. And handed 5-6 sheets of more vocabulary because we don't have a class next Sunday. Gosh! I don't have a clue as to how I am going to learn all this.

With 10 classes done, we are already halfway through. :-)

Spanish - Class VII

'La Pizarra' had the totally unintelligible words (as shown in the picture above) scrawled all over it when I walked in for the Spanish class on Sunday morning. From the looks of it, they were the remnants of a botany class. Wonder how the students manage to memorize these words. :-(

If I look back to my class notes of yesterday, I wonder what we did for two hours. We only seem to have learnt to answer a question in the affirmative and in the negative. Yet, we were busy the entire time. Of course we did lots of exercises. So there isn't a load of extra material to revise if the teacher does get down to conducting a surprise test on the coming Sunday. That's a huge relief.

One of the exercises in the class involved straightening out the jumbled form of words to arrive at the names of the countries and then match them to the 'las nacionalidades' i.e. the nationalities. I was so engrossed in writing down the meaning of the Spanish words that formed the question that I failed to fully grasp the question and stared at the list of words uncomprehendingly. The girl sitting next to me didn't have her exercise book but she was quickly matching the words from mine. Astonished, I asked her how she knew all of this. She smiled and said 'Aren't these words supposed to be jumbled?'. I checked, realized my stupidity and we both burst out laughing.

Another exercise involved looking at the pictures of people and matching them with their 'Profesions'. I had never thought, even in my wildest dreams, that I would be doing this again in my life! The third exercise was 'Fill in the blanks' type where we had to fill in the profession in the sentence. The word 'escuela' seemed unfamiliar (Que Significa 'escuela'?) until my neighbor said 'that means school'. I was pretty certain the word had never come up during discussions in earlier classes. But before I could open my mouth she held up her cell phone's screen. I believe she had accessed some app to get the word's meaning. Really, one of these days I have to get down to overcoming my phobia for remaining connected 24 * 7, get net access on my phone and check out this whole hoopla called 'apps'. God! I feel like a saber-tooth would feel if he is ever brought back to life in this century.

The last part of the class was total fun. The teacher made us listen to the recording of 'El Abecedario' i.e. the alphabets because she firmly believes that we don't revise it enough. In the next part of the recording a man (or was that a woman?) spoke a few words which were supposed to be names of some of the Latin American cities. Now, the quality of that recording leaves much to be desired. It also doesn't help that the class room isn't an AC one so there is plenty of ambient noise. So, we were supposed to write down the names as we heard them being pronounced. Out of the 5-6 names spoken, I only understood 'San Jose' and that too when the recording was played for the second time around. There were lots of bewildered faces and heads shaking in frustration. The teacher smiled and wrote down the names of the cities. We are supposed to find out about them. I don't know how it is supposed to help our knowledge of Spanish but that's one thing that I got to do today evening.

Spanish - Class VI

Whoa! The teacher taught so much in this class that I hope she conducts the surprise test on the coming Sunday. My tiny brain won't be able to cram in the material taught in yet another session for the exam :-)

When I was revising the material before the class I wondered if I had by mistake left off the 'c' in 'Adjetivos'. Nope, adjectives are indeed called 'Adjetivos' in Spanish, sorry, in Española. The first thing that we learnt in the 6th class was how the adjective changes as per the gender and plurality of the noun that it describes. So Masculino Singular 'Bueno' becomes 'Buena' for Femenino Singular, 'Buenos' for Masculino Plural and 'Buenas' for Femenino Plural. And that's just one of the rules - applicable to the adjectives that end in 'o'. There is one for the adjectives ending in rest of the vowels, another for ones ending in consonants and representing nationalities, one for adjectives ending in consonants (without having anything to do with the nationalities) and the last one for adjectives ending in 'or' or 'on'. I am sure I will forget what I had started to say by the time I am done mentally going through all the rules :-)

As if this wasn't material enough for one class, next was the very first verb - 'Ser' i.e. To Be (Thank God it wasn't Hamlet teaching us Spanish!). I was happy to learn that 'Yo' stands for 'I'. That's easy to remember! 'Yo Soy' means 'I am'. My joy was short-lived. There is 'Nosotros/as Somos' for 'We Are'. Then there are 2 forms for 'You' - 'Tu' (तुम) is used in Spain and Usted (आप) is used in the Latin America. I was so glad they haven't heard of the Bambaiyya तू :-) As we went about chanting 'Yo Soy' down to 'Ellos/Ellas Son' (They Are), I suddenly remembered my English school teacher asking us to repeat after her - I go, you go, it goes, he goes, she goes, they go. Life seems to have come full circle for me.

BTW, there is no 'it' in Spanish. Oh, and there are 6 cases where these forms of 'To Be' are used. I dare not think about the exceptions.

There was no home work this time. But the teacher has told us that we will have to introduce ourselves to the class. Here goes:

Yo Soy Swapna. (I am Swapna)
Soy Hindú (Hindú means 'Indian'. Wonder what the various jamats and jaishs will make of this!).
Soy Ingeniera De Ordenadores (Ordenador is Computer. I hope what I have written means "I am a Computer Engineer")

What worries me is the tildes and horizontal bars that seem to accompany some of the letters. How in God's name am I going to remember them? :-(

Spanish - Class V

A familiar feeling assailed me as I opened my eyes on Sunday morning - a total reluctance to leave the comfort of my bed, get ready and head for the class. Hercules might well have cleaned the Augean stables but I bet you anything under the sun that he would have found getting up on a Sunday morning much much more daunting. I let out a sigh and was done wallowing in self-pity. Then pictured myself conversing in fluent Spanish. That did it. Within a span of minutes I was up and ready and on my way.

There were only a few students when I got into the class - one was reading a book, another was listening to music and the rest were busy talking. But slowly more started trickling in and the class was full by the time the teacher walked in. The first item on the agenda was learning the rules for changing the plurality of the nouns - 6 rules in all. The teacher explained each and we dutifully wrote it down. Then did the exercises. Somewhere along the line the teacher discovered that we haven't been revising enough. So she declared that there will be a surprise test this week. Oh Boy!

Next we learnt about the adjectives - only 2 rules. One, the adjective follows the noun instead of preceding it. And two, the adjective changes as per the gender and plurality of the noun. Thank God for small mercies!

We finished the class with a list of words used for asking questions - when, where, why, what, which, who and how. Here's a list of questions I would like to frame in Spanish:

When is the teacher going to conduct the test?
What sort of questions are going to be asked?
Who is going to score the highest?
And the billion dollar questions - how am I going to fare?

Spanish - Class IV

The classroom was empty when I walked in. I checked the time. 8:45am. Normally I would see a couple of sleepy heads discussing last session's notes. But today there was no one to be seen. Was I the only one from the class who wasn't informed about today's session being cancelled? But then the classroom would be closed as well, right? 'Eh, the Spanish class is held in this classroom, isn't it?' someone asked me. 'Yeah, it is. But there is no one.' 'Oh well, someone would come and tell us if it it cancelled' the student said nonchalantly as she walked past me and entered the classroom. Ah, the beauty of being 18 or 19. You have all the time in the world at your disposal. And here I was thinking about the zillion things that I could have got done if the class had indeed been cancelled.

As it turned out, it hadn't been cancelled. As the minutes ticked by, more and more people filed in. Someone came and told us that we were to collect our book. So a bunch of us trouped to the 1st floor, turned a corner, ended up at another classroom full of students, looked sheepishly about and then were informed that we were supposed to head in the other direction. Can someone please hand over a cuppa steaming coffee to me, please? I must be sleep-walking. Move over zombies from 'The Walking Dead'! So we dragged ourselves in the general opposite direction and stood outside a small cabin. When my turn came, I entered, showed the receipt and collected a book - which, honestly, I am yet to take a good look at. But all this walking did me a favor. It woke me up. By the time the teacher walked in, I was all ready for today's lesson.

Today's lesson was about the gender change. I meant about how to change the gender of the nouns. E.g. 'El Hermano' becomes 'La Hermana' because the last 'o' gets changed to 'a'. And 'El Profesor' becomes 'La Profesora' because the last letter is a consonant i.e. 'r'. Piece of cake!

In an earlier class, we had done numbers 1 to 10. Now it was the turn of 11 to 20. After making us recite the numbers 4-5 times the teacher turned it into a game. So people had to say aloud the next number when their turn came. The next time it was the next even number and after that the next odd number.

Next on agenda were the months of the year. The class was divided into two sections and each side had to say the name of a month. The other side had to respond by saying the name of the next month. On the next round, it would be the previous month and on the last round it was the second month after that. Must say it was a great way to remember things without having to learn them by heart. And a lot of fun too!

Can't believe we have already finished 4 classes out of the total 20. 20% done and looking forward to more :-)

Spanish - Class III

I don't exactly recollect how long it took me to master 'He goes', 'She goes', 'It goes' and 'They go' in school. But when the teacher said that Spanish has only two articles - "a" and "the", I was very happy. Things can't get any simpler than that, now can they? But I had no way of knowing about Masculino Singular, Femenino Singular, Masculino Plural and Femenino Plural - separate for "a" and for "the"!

Just when I thought I had got it all squared away after a couple of repetitions, the teacher dropped another bombshell - there are rules about what can be considered as masculine and what is feminine. I had blissfully assumed that the rules are rather universal. And then there are exceptions. Of course! So though you can consider many nouns ending in 'o' as masculine - El/Un Libro (book) for example - mano (hand) and radio (radio) are, for some inexplicable reason, feminine. Nouns ending in 'a' are feminine most of the times - e.g. La/ Una pizarra (blackboard) - but dia (day) and planeta (planet) are masculine.Thankfully, the rule that nouns representing male relatives are masculine and those for female relatives are feminine doesn't have any exceptions. :-)

I glanced at my cell phone at the end of couple of exercises and was amazed to see that we were already at the end of the class. As I wondered if I am gonna able to memorize all this, a part of me knew that I definitely would.

As I sat writing this, the movie 'We Bought The Zoo' was playing in the background. One of the keepers was talking to Benjamin, the new owner of the zoo. She told him all the problems that the zoo was facing and asked him why he bought the place. I paused to see what Benjamin was going to say. He simply said 'Why not?' and smiled. I found myself smiling with him. That's one hell of a reason. And probably heaps better than mine 'Spanish is the second most used language in the world'.

What say?

Spanish - Class I

Honestly, I didn't know what to expect on the 1st day. But I was glad I had joined up because I have wanted to learn a foreign language since a very long time. At the beginning of my career, I had done a basic Japanese language course conducted at one of the IT organizations I was working for. Maybe that had vetted my appetite. I never got the chance to follow through on what I had learnt though. Somewhere down the line I decided to learn one foreign and one Indian language - before I turn 60 :-) The choice of the Indian language was easy. I had realized over the years that learning any South Indian language would be an uphill, if not impossible, task. I was, and still am, told that if you learn one South Indian language, you can understand a bit of the other 3. But I guess that is not my cuppa tea, or should I say coffee? ;-) I want to learn Bengali instead - part of the reason being that I want to read the Bengali literature in the original. Let's see when I get down to that.

So now on to the choice of a foreign language. I wanted to go for something that is pronounced more or less the same way that it is spelt. So French and German were out. Plus it needed to be used across more than one country. Given the fact that Spanish is the second-most used language in the business worldwide, it was the natural choice. And I seemed to know a few words already - Adios, Hola, Gracias and Hasta La Vista (from The Terminator, of course!). :-)

'Spanish?' I asked a group of what looked like students as I stood in the classroom doorway. 'German' they said. The next classroom was for Spanish. As I occupied a bench someone asked from the doorway 'Chinese?'. I said 'Spanish'. Boy! Hats off to thsoe who want to learn Chinese. Patience is not one of my many virtues!

The teacher hadn't yet made his/her appearance. So I studied the crowd around me. Most of them were students from the look of things. I kind of envied them. Back in the Engineering college days, it was all we could do to just scramble up to complete the assignments on time. The thought of doing something extra-curricular never even occurred to anyone of us. Kids these days are lucky. But I was glad that so many had turned up. Clearly they wanted to utilize their time well. 3-4 people looked like they could be professionals. And one was a senior citizen.

A couple of minutes past 9am, the teacher walked in. Before I realized what was happening all the students got up. The professionals and the senior citizen had an amused look on their faces. I guess it has been a while since any of us had to get up because there was 'teacher on the bridge' :-)

First few minutes were spent in introductions and why each one of us was there that morning. Some of the students had the same reason as me - Spanish being the second most used language worldwide - for deciding to learn it. There were a few who had learnt French or German before. But about 4-5 of them said that there was no special reason for selecting Spanish. That stumped me a bit. Why would someone want to spend 2 hours of his/her life on a Sunday morning unless they wanted to do so?

Okay, next up on the agenda were salutations or Saludos - how do you say hello, bye, good morning/afternoon/night, sorry, excuse me and a couple of other things. By 10am the class was over. Wait, wasn't it supposed to go on till 11am? But the teacher said that she wanted to take up the alphabets next and would do so next class.

Alrighty then. Hasta Pronto. Adios. :-)

Spanish - Class II

I guess people still have got to get used to their classrooms. I had forgotten which floor the classroom was on. After roaming about on the first floor looking confused I remembered that it was on the second floor and finally managed to locate it. Before I could worry about the early onset of Alzheimer's, a couple of students walked by asking 'Chinese?', 'German?'. There sure is safety in numbers :-)

Hmmm....El Alfabeto O El Abecedario. How different can they be from the good old ABCDE, right? But wait. The letters seem to be having names. e.g. 'b' is 'be', 'c' is 'ce' and so on till 'z' which is called 'Seta'. Why? No idea. I was totally bewildered by the time we limped to 'z'. How in the name of God am I going to remember all this? The teacher made us all repeat the entire alphabet at least 5 times. Our recital got mixed with similar recitals floating from the other classrooms. And suddenly I got the old rhythm of being in school back. :-) The El Abecedario seemed just a teeny weeny bit easier.

Aha, not so fast. There are exceptions (aren't there always?) to the rules. I inwardly groaned. So 'c' with a, o or u is pronounced as 'k' (as in kilo) but with i and e becomes 's' (as in stone). Similarly, 'g' with a, o or u is pronounced as 'g' (as in game) but with i and e becomes 'h' (as in 'house'). Oh and BTW, the alphabet 'h' is silent in Spanish so 'hola' is actually pronounced as 'ola'.

The teacher then distributed exercise sheets with about 100-120 words across 3 pages. We had to take turns to list alphabets in each word and then pronounce it. Till 11, we managed to get through one page. So the rest was home work.

Thus ended my 2nd class of Spanish.