Buenos dias, Quakes fans, for en mere stykke of Diary. This week's entry came to me while I was sitting in a coffee shop on Santa Clara Street in Downtown on Sunday afternoon, checking out all of the sweet scenery during the annual Cinco de Mayo cruise fest.
For anyone that was down there, you know what I mean. For those that have no idea what I'm talking about, we have quite a celebration for the 5th of May. Although Sunday was of course the 1st, San Jose put on a parade in the morning, and the majority of the late afternoon consisted of folks "cruising" up and down the main drag, showcasing their rides, some with hydraulics and spinners, some with flags and crazy loud music. Anyway, as I sat and enjoyed the surrounding mix of people, I noticed that English was not the language of choice.
San Jose is an area rich with people from various ethnicities. It is really not uncommon to walk around town and hear another language being spoken. On the Quakes, we have had quite a few Spanish speakers, some from Mexico, Costa Rica, Venezuela (we know you are from there, Alejandro), and Argentina.
Azizi spoke Farsi, which was a total mystery to all of us. Dario Brose and Ryan Tinsley would often speak in German. They were really funny, I think. I guess the point is that I find it impressive that these people are bilingual.
On the whole, Americans are extremely lucky. We don't really have to learn another language to get by, which I learned first hand when I lived in Scandinavia. I tried to speak Danish, don't misunderstand. It's just that they all learn English at a very young age, and seem eager to use it.
I would often go into the coffee shop in Aarhus (shout out to Baresso!), and order my coffee (or sometimes Gatorade, of course): Jeg vil gerne bede om en stor kup kaffe eller Gatorade. Past that, I was useless. If they asked anything back, my response was: Jeg kan ikke tale dansk. Um, I don't speak Danish.
The few times that my friends would try to make me speak to them in the Mother Tongue of Denmark, they would get so flustered by my butchering of their words that we would revert back to English almost immediately. The worst was when I could only think of half the words in Danish and the other half in Spanish. I can usually put whole sentences together with that combo, as evidenced in my opening line. Sometimes, I would get confused and say things like, "Jeg vil kore til su casa cerca de klokken ni".
Actual Danish-Spanish translation: I will drive to your house around nine o'clock. Literal translation: I am stupid.
There were also times that I experienced the "Lost in Translation" problem. My coach at AGF would often talk to us for 20 minutes before the game about tactics and strategy, and I would hear my name a few times amid the sea of Swedish words.
After the meeting, he would pull me aside and say "Play it to the forwards". Uh, is that it? Twenty minutes of instruction, and for me it boils down to 5 words. Are you kidding me? Did it take you 20 minutes to tell everyone else that in Swedish, or am I getting short-changed here?
So what's the point of all this? I don't know. I was just impressed the other day hearing so many people speaking another language here in the good ole USA.
See ya, adios, jeg vil snakke med dig snart,
Wade
