Adapting....

In my post before last, I talked about adapting to different things on the missionary field. I’m going to attempt to explain a little about what I was talking about. I am going to use terms I understand and not big words or phrases that the average person in church doesn't. Especially me. What I have found reading many blogs. The “elite” continually use words that are not any where in the Webster’s or any other reference I use. My grammar is not perfect and I will misspell words. So with that said off we go.
Adapting to language and culture….
Well, for me I can not separate the two. I wish I could explain how they are not separate but to me you have to learn the culture if you are going to learn the language as well. Let me give you a little history of my language learning. We went to Costa Rica to learn the Spanish. I worked hard to learn vocabulary and verb conjugation. I learned real quick that no matter hard I tried, my mind would reject any rational explanation to why they go around the block to say a very simple statement. When we left Costa Rica I felt I could at least go to the grocery store and buy food for our family. When we arrived here in Uruguay, I promise you I thought they were using some tribal language because it did not sound like Spanish. (there are no tribes or Indians here, they were run out or killed out in the conception of the country. So many different sounds, not to mention different words but I didn’t realize so many different words till after another six months in the country was I able to understand simple statements. Now I have spent the past ten months or so trying to work on conversational skills.
Now how adapting to the culture has effected adaptation to language… Well if you can’t understand what they are saying and how they are saying it. You can’t understand the explanations they are giving for why they do certain things. Yes people have written papers on the culture of Uruguay. (A very few) I have learned that those people wrote about the people where they lived and in this short time Uruguay I have learned that the people in the urban setting are very different people than the people in the “campo” (country). They have a few things in common but probably most common thing is the drinking of “mate”. That is another post as well. Till next time…I will post more about adaptations.