Lost in Translation

What tools have become invaluable to me as a language learner of Spanish? I post this in order to give you an idea about the process, and perhaps you may be a language learner who could glean some ideas from my experience, especially if you're learning Spanish. Here are a list of activities, books, etc. that have become invaluable for me:

1) A high school level dictionary in Spanish. This may sound basic, but it's much better to rely primarily on a Spanish-only dictionary, instead of an English-Spanish one. You learn to think in context, not to mention that you are exposed to new words in the definitions, forcing you to learn new words.

2) A book of synonyms and antonyms. This is an invaluable tool for sermon and lesson prep. In Spanish we have a common weakness which is called "cosismo" (Spanish word "cosa" means "thing"). Instead of describing what I'm talking about in precise or varying terms, it's easy to fall back on words like "thing." This book helps me expand my vocab and use more colorful words.

3) Diccionario Panhispanico de Dudas de la RAE. This is the dictionary of "doubts" put out by the authority on Spanish, the Royal Academy of Spanish in Spain. This book is gold. It answers common doubts that native speakers have about their language, or errors that are commonly thought correct. For me, it helps tremendously with prepositions and verbs. For example, in English the word "look" can have different meanings with different prepositions (look for, look out for, etc.). It's similar in Spanish, and I often don't know which preposition goes with which verb.

4) A Bible that has four versions in parallel on the page. Again, this is a necessity for me because the Reina Valera version that we normally preach from often uses more difficult words or constructions. It also helps to be able to put a text in more common language, since that's half of the work in preaching and teaching.

5) A Bible that was translated in Bogota. This Bible helps me know for sure how I could say something in this city and be understood.

6) Tongue twisters. One of my profs in Costa Rica gave me about five pages of tongue twisters. I've been finding that pronunciation is one of my biggest problems in Spanish. My tongue just doesn't want to obey me with some words, so I've been "working out" with these tongue twisters for a week (5 min. per day) and have noticed a difference.

7) A chart with the 11 most common irregular verbs in Spanish. I practice with this chart to the point of being able to say the conjugations at break-neck speed without errors. Why? These verbs are your bread and butter in Spanish. If you're making mistakes on the verb "to be" you're sunk. It has to be overlearned to the point where you never make a mistake on these verbs.

8) The Internet. This is surely a breakthrough in language study. Ideally we would have a native speaker who could answer every question on usage, but that isn't always practical. So, if I don't know exactly how a phrase goes, I plug it into Google with quotes. If it comes up 258,918 times, I can be pretty sure it's valid Spanish. I can even do a search only in Colombia to see if it's used here. But if it returns 7 hits, I will probably think it's just a few gringos who don't know how the phrase should be.

9) www.wordreference.com. This website is fabulous for language help. The site has a ton of people who speak various languages and post questions and answers about them. Usually someone answers my question within ten minutes, not to mention that the database has thousands of the most common questions that you´ll run into. You can add a toolbar to Firefox for the site as well.

10) Prayer. Several days per week I pray in Spanish during my devotional time instead of in English. I always have a dictionary on hand because I like to talk to God with the right words. I think that I´ve picked up more vocabulary this way than almost any other.

Well, these are the tools that I've found myself relying on. Obviously, mastering a language is not a short-term process, but good tools definitely help.

I was talking with one of our Colombian pastors last week, and he said something interesting: "In the ministry the problems are generally the same." How true. I've been noticing the same thing in the ministry in Chia.

What's the basic problem of your average Christian? A self-centered life as opposed to a Christ-centered live. For example, how do we solve problems in our household? Well, if we are self-centered we'll do it according to what seems right to us. We may explode, we may avoid the problem, or we may try get back at our family member so that "they see how it feels." I've found that many Christians haven't learned how to ask for forgiveness. But this is a prime case of giving Satan a foothold in our family.

Of course we see different variations of the same-old problems. I've had to scratch my head a few times lately. I had someone storm out of the class I was teaching in a different church for the following very good reason . . . a difference of opinion over Spanish grammar. This person then refused to talk to anyone from the church. You really can't do anything except pray for such a person.