What puzzles me about the English language

What are the barriers that the Spanish-speaking folks find when trying to learn English?

1.- Spanish is a phonetic language, English is not.
2.- Phrasal verbs
3.- False friends

1. Spanish is a phonetic language, English is not.
Some languages are "phonetic". That means you can look at a written word and know how to pronounce it. Or you can hear a word and know how to spell it. With phonetic languages, there is a direct relationship between the spelling and the sound.
The Spanish is a phonetic language (mostly) and the English is not. This is our first, and I would say main, difficulty when studying English.
In English some words can have the same spelling but different pronunciation, for example:
I like to read [ri:d].
I have read [red] that book.
Some words have different spelling but the same pronunciation, for example:
I have read [red] that book.
My favourite colour is red [red].
This puzzles us, the Spanish-speaking folks.
In Spanish a “spelling bee contest” will not make any sense. It will be too easy.
In Spanish there are five vowels with five different sounds, in English there a five vowels with twenty different sounds. This confuses us and it is what give us, the Spanish-speaking folks the particular accent we have.
For instance, I’ve been never been able to distinguish I Can from I Can’t.
When we go to the Pharmacy we ask for
VicksVaporub (Show sign) instead of (Peter)
To further illustrate this point, we say that the spelling "ough" can be pronounced with seven different sounds. But this is the wrong way to put it. It would be better to say that the seven different sounds can be represented in writing by the same spelling. So you see that it cannot help at all to think about "ough". It's much more helpful to think about the seven sounds:
1. though (like o in go)
2. through (like oo in too)
3. cough (like off in offer)
4. rough (like uff in suffer)
5. plough (like ow in flower)
6. ought (like aw in saw)
7. borough (like a in above)
This drive us crazy

2. Phrasal verbs
A phrasal verb is a verb plus a preposition or adverb which creates a meaning different from the original verb.
This produces utter confusion in us, the students .
My favourite is
MAKE UP
It has 12 different meanings as a transitive verb
1. to form by fitting together or assembling
2. to arrange typeset matter in (as pages) for printing
3. to combine to produce (a sum or whole)
4. constitute, compose <10 chapters make up this volume>
5. to compensate for (as a deficiency or omission)
6. to do or take in order to correct an omission
7. settle, decide
8. to wrap or fasten up
9. to prepare in physical appearance for a role
10. to apply cosmetics to
11. invent, improvise
12. to set in order
And 6 as intransitive verb.
1. to become reconciled
2. to act ingratiatingly and flatteringly
3. to make advances : court
4. compensate
5. to put on costumes or makeup (as for a play)
6. to apply cosmetics

3. False friends

Like
Preservatives
Avocado
End of diversion

So, I’m about to finish up this speech, which I’ve made up with the help of the web, because I’m looking forward to the food and drinks

Ration book and catechism

Today, I’m going to tell you a couple of stories of my life. That’s all. Nothing extraordinary, just a couple of stories.

My early years have been marked by two books: The Ration Book and the Catechism. One brings to me good remembrances, the other bad remenbrances

The ration book

I belong to the so-called post-war generation.

It was a difficult time.

Let me smile at the present economic crisis. At that time, basic staples were rationed: cooking oil, wheat flour, coal, soap, tobacco and many others. We used food coupons. That lasted till 1.952.

Did we, the kids, notice? Not at all, for us it was a happy time.

We constructed our own toys –a far cry of the play stations of today—.These were:

·       Slingshots (made with a forked branch, inner tube strips, and leather pad). For hunting birds, cats and the like.

·       Bows and arrows

·       Kites and balloons (with wire, rope and paper). High, high, up and away.

·       racing cars, my favourite, huge speed, lots of danger, (with wooden boards and roller bearings)

·       swords and shields (out of wood)

·       drums (with empty cans)

We played also

·       bottle top football (with faces of players pasted in)

·       ring game (with bicycle wheels)

·       hut construction (on top of trees)

·       Nail game (with a big nail). After turning, nail had to hit the ground with pointed end and get it nailed on the ground.

·       rag ball (with strips of cloth)

·       marbles (we made our own out of glass)

Toy construction is a tricky business: inventing, calibrating, testing and perfecting. We learned how to use our own hands and ingenuity.

After all, using tools is one of our signs of identity as “homo sapiens”. It has transformed, for right or wrong, the world around us.

The other thing that marked my youth was:

The catechism

My parents sent me to the Jesuits for an education.

The Jesuits threw at me all their weaponry of mass persuasion: catechism, daily masses, rosaries, confession, communion, holy week, processions, prayers, chants, incense and spiritual exercises.

They promised me the joy of heaven, where I will enjoy eternal bliss, and threatened me with fire of hell, where I will burn forever. They told me to be chaste and advised me against sex before marriage and even masturbation. They taught me the sacred history, the dogma, the moral and the liturgy. We collected money to convert to Christianity the Negroes in Africa, and the Indians in America. We carried flowers to the Virgin Mary in springtime. We mourned the death of Christ in Easter time. We were inspired to admire de saints (lots of them) and respect the Pope in Rome which was infallible (that is: never made mistakes).

But, of all that, I consider particularly wicked the way we were taught Catechism. We had to learn it by heart, and at the age of seven, we didn’t understand a thing.

It was a series of Q & A. It begun:

-        Q. Tell us boy, what’s your name (using the old Spanish “Vos”)

-        A. Pablo

-        Q. Are you a Christian?

-        A. Yes, by the grace of God

-        Q. Do you know what it means to be a Christian?

-        A. A man who has the faith in Christ, professed at the baptism

Many religions (Buddhist, Jews, and Muslims) teach this way to early age children.

The children gather in the religious school, given the sacred texts, assigned a portion they must learn, and there you see the poor children nodding their heads, fighting to memorise those strange words they don’t understand.

I would call this child abuse.

We had competitions to show our proficiency. It was a kind of “musical chairs”. We were organized in a circle, a child saying a question and the other the answer. If anyone failed, he was out. The circle was thus reduced until there was a handful of chosen ones, or perhaps one, who was the winner, and was given a present (a book with the life of a saint, for instance).

All these weapons of mass distraction, yes, they threw at me, but, alas, they did not succeed.

And my mother, 91 years old, still living, tells me: ah Pablo, Pablo, with all we spent sending you to the Jesuits and now an atheist! You have read too many books that have poisoned you.

So, two books: the ration book and the catechism. One, was symbol of the dire economic conditions in post-war Spain, but a happy time for kids.

The other, the catechism, a symbol of the suffocating religious indoctrination of the times: a form of oppression. 

Spanish "jornada"

There is the schedule of the most successful business in my neighborhood, the cobbler: 35 hours a week. If this business in good times goes well, in times of crisis it fares even better.

The "Spanish" schedule of my shoemaker is one of the most irrational in the world and is known as "split-day". It prevents the worker to do anything after a day's work, keeps the work - family balance untenable and prevents civilized dinner hours. It, however, permits the nap, the greater Spanish invention of all times. Note that the shoemaker takes 2 hours of rest at midday (enough time to go home, eat, take a nap and come back). By the time our cobbler opens at 16:30, European workers are beginning to pick up and store their tools to go back home.

The irrationality of the Spanish work schedule has led to the creation of the Association for the Rationalization of Spanish Hours (ARHO), which is not to be taken as a joke, as it has already made its first Congress , with  the honorary presidency of, no less, than the King of Spain.

But there are worse things. If the split - time work schedule is irrational, the continuous work schedule of the public officials is a real scam. These, theoretically work from 8 to 15h, with half an hour break in-between (the famous breakfast of public workers). In practice, they arrive at 9 o'clock and live at 14 hours. If we discount the smoke breaks, we have about 4 hours of actual work. That is, 20 hours a week, which throws productivity to unfathomable depths. But officials do not hold conferences to streamline schedules. It looks they are fine with what they have.

How we get through this?

This gentleman, looking like a funeral employee, is Nouriel Roubini, known for having predicted the financial crisis we find ourselves on long before anyone. Known is that economists are able to explain the past, but unable to predict the future. Roubini is an exception, therefore he is famous. Capitalizing on its predictive success, he has written the book "How we get through this", which I just read.

The economy is known as "the dismal science" because it deals basically with how to satisfy unlimited wants with limited means. There is never enough, there are always shortages. You must be aware of this when you read books on economics, but when you finish reading the book of Roubini, you have a deep depression: everything goes wrong, there are bubbles to explode in India, public debt is squeezing the Club Med countries, the dollar will soon cease to be the reserve currency and the Euro system will explode ...

Despite its title "How we get through this", if you want answers, if you want to know the way of redemption, you're not going to find it in this book. Only at the end, has a shy tips like these:

• Employees of financial institutions should be paid so that their interests are aligned with those of shareholders.
• Securitization must be transparent, standardized and strictly regulated.
• The "over-the-counter" products must come to light and be traded on organized markets.
• We must review the business model of rating agencies to eliminate the enormous conflict of interest for their income is produced by the companies they themselves qualify.
• Some of the institutions considered too big to fail will have to be split.

Finally, in his pessimistic line, Roubini says, all these reforms are reasonable, but remember that, the best-designed regulations may not work.

That's what I said, the dismal science.

A devil's chaplain

I have read another book from my teacher Richard Dawkins. Funny, where I like him most is not on the subject of evolutionary biology, which is his supposed specialty, but on religions, at which he lashes out mercilessly.

According to him, the human mind can become infected with something akin to computer viruses. If the virus were a religion What signs or symptoms characteristic possess the victim? According to Richard, they would be:

1. The patient feels compelled by a deep inner conviction to believe in something, that has nothing to do with evidence or reason. Doctors refer to such beliefs with the name of "faith".
2. The idea that the lack of evidence is a virtue, reinforces the belief.
3. The "mystery" itself is a good thing: the mystery of transubstantiation, the Trinity, the virginal conception, and so on.
4. The victim attacks believers of rival faiths, reaching, in extreme cases, to death. It can also be violent against the apostates and heretics. It is particularly hostile to scientific reasoning. Especially harmful is the virus of "suicide mission."
5. The most important variable in determining the professed religion is the accident of birth. The virus can be transmitted horizontally as measles, but is unlikely.
6. The patient's inner feelings can remember at an alarming rate to those ordinarily associated with sexual love.

But the virus does not always win. Many children have come out unscathed from the worst that nuns and mullahs had to throw. It is the optimistic message.

A new nose for Aisha

(Dedicated to my son Cesar, who does not like the Yankee Empire)

This case definitely calls my attention.
This is Aisha, a girl from Afghanistan to whom her family, allegedly allied to the Taliban, crippled by cutting her nose off, for alleged honor offenses. The case has been taken as its own by the massive U.S. propaganda machine. TIME magazine (which I have been reading the last 40 years without a hiccup) put her out in the cover with the misleading title: What happens if we leave Afghanistan?. 
The machine to detect fallacies that - probably because of professional bias - I have in mind, switches on to alert mode: here is a lie. 
The U.S. is trying to justify their presence in Afghanistan for humanitarian reasons, to save the poo girl from tribal barbarism. Nothing is more false, the U.S. is causing massive death and destruction in Afghanistan for purely military reasons (to show their power, to oil the machinery of war) and vengeance (still the Twin Towers), not because it is threatened by Afghasitán nor, much less, on compassionate grounds. Communism defeated , we must seek new external enemies. Fear of the American population to these imaginary enemies keeps it subdued.
We can reformulate the question: What would happen if we leave Afghanistan? and then put the face of a child burned by napalm from a missile shot by a pilotless plane driven by a guy who has a 9 to 5 workday in California (yes, the war is conducted like this today.) What would happen if they leave Afghanistan is that it would prevent many deaths of innocent people. No mutilation, death.
As the issue has captured the popular imagination, an American foundation, the Grossman Burn, has taken over and has operated the nose. Very compassionate, yes sir, and well suited to the official propaganda. All this has been echoed by the CNN,  Vancouver Sun and Daily Beast.
In short, do not believe the official propaganda, they want to fool you.
And now, what do you think?