Keenan arrived in Panama knowing only the word for bellybutton.  We were visiting Panama City’s immigration headquarters where he used the time standing in line to memorize the list of prohibited things one might act out in the government office. “No ombligo afuera.” I heard him repeating to himself.  No exposed bellybuttons allowed. It was a useful first sentence for maybe a prison guard, but for Keenan it became more of a motto.

“No ombligo afuera” he would say to a waitress at the local deli. He sometimes would even point at the menu while using his phrase as if to further confuse the victim. “Yes, I would like to order the no ombligo afuera with rice?”

As his Spanish started to improve, Keenan began to sound less like a psycho and more like a confused robot. It’s a natural step on the road to proficiency, the process of connecting simple nouns with verbs, but with his Chinese descent, Keenan’s Spanish had a way of coming off as oddly rude and demanding.

“You drive to the bank right now for me” he once said to a taxi driver. It was less that he’s inherently disrespectful and more that his vocabulary was simply limiting. “Bring me bottle of beer” he might request. “Bring me cold bottle now, please. Bellybutton?”

The common way to order food at a restaurant in Panama is two-fold. To sound like a local, you must first demand the item like a king, but then follow it up with a polite qualifier. “Give me the steak and fries…please” is one we like to use. If you mistakenly pause long enough in between, you come off sounding like an asshole.

Keenan’s Spanish hurdles were not limited to the service industry though. They found their way into his social life as well. Take the time he received a missed call from an unknown number on his cell phone. He called the number back in an effort to clear up any confusion but instead his Spanish simply made matters worse. “Someone will call me from this phone?” he said. “Someone, will call me now? Who are you?”

That’s the problem with Spanish: you get one verb tense wrong and it totally changes the direction of the conversation. Instead of figuring out who had accidentally dialed his number, Keenan was demanding a courtesy call from a stranger. “No” the person said. “Why should I call you?”

Rather than admit defeat, Keenan has made serious efforts to learn, what I like to call, pre-packaged phrases. Tried-and-true sentences or commands which have been pre-approved by friends or acquaintances. That way, even if the context in which its used is inappropriate, at least the mistake is made with decent grammar. “Ya me voy” is a good one. “I’m on my way.” You don’t even really have to get the circumstances right to sound semi-expert-like.

Learning Spanish in Panama is an ongoing process for Keenan, who’s made leaps and bounds since he arrived and knew only the word for bellybutton. He now knows how to say “chocolate oranges” and “Oooh, that smells like dog sauce” which are considerably more practical than what he began with.

This post's rating:

Related Stories

Filed under: Culture on May 3rd, 2008