Mundo Verde - Check their Spanish

[Anonymous]

^^which school are your kids in? thanks for your perspective!

[Anonymous]

With respect to vosotros, The author of “le ton beau du Marot” notes that English once had an informal pronoun, “thee,” and “thou.” Over time, the informal tense went away, and now it’s so rarely used that when it is used it sounds awkward and oddly formal. I often wonder about the effect this has had on English-speaking culture – we speak formally all the time, which would seem odd to our forebears.

With respect to poorly worded signs, I think it is reasonable to expect a bilingual school to have properly worded posters and signs around the school. At the school we left, I was very offended to see signs in English that were wrongly worded: "Wipe You're Feet!" If a school is truly bilingual, they should make sure their public signs are correctly written in both languages, because this is what bi-lingual means: you have to set an example in both languages, otherwise the school is not really trying to be bilingual. Bilingualism is not a party trick.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With respect to vosotros, The author of “le ton beau du Marot” notes that English once had an informal pronoun, “thee,” and “thou.” Over time, the informal tense went away, and now it’s so rarely used that when it is used it sounds awkward and oddly formal. I often wonder about the effect this has had on English-speaking culture – we speak formally all the time, which would seem odd to our forebears.

With respect to poorly worded signs, I think it is reasonable to expect a bilingual school to have properly worded posters and signs around the school. At the school we left, I was very offended to see signs in English that were wrongly worded: "Wipe You're Feet!" If a school is truly bilingual, they should make sure their public signs are correctly written in both languages, because this is what bi-lingual means: you have to set an example in both languages, otherwise the school is not really trying to be bilingual. Bilingualism is not a party trick.

+1

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know if this has improved since last year?

[Anonymous]

For all of the nitpicking on language- DCPS made spelling mistakes on the enrollment forms! This was published, proofed by more than one person yet still happened.

[Anonymous]

Oh God how sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I too noticed that the Spanish at LAMB was flawless and felt extremely confident with their presentation. I also noticed that the Spanish (from Spain) volunteer teachers at Powell, a lovely school, are teaching all the kids the vosotros form. Why on earth would you teach kids with a Central American background the vosotros, and furthermore, ask them to employ it in classwork, hang it on the wall, etc.? That to me reeks of snobbery and a total lack of understanding of kids they are working with. So maybe "perfect" grammar is also a liability.

How on earth would you teach Spanish without using vosotros? Regardless of how Spanish is spoken in Latin America, or English is spoken in Jamaica or SE DC, or French is spoken in Haiti, a school has the responsibility of teaching languages in an academically correct way. And that has nothing to do with snobbishness or intelligence blablabla it's just the responsibility of a school.

Vosotros and vos are not initially understood by the majority of native Spanish speakers in the world. I was very worried that my child's Spanish teacher came from Spain, and that she would introduce the Spaniard "lisp" and vosotros. Non immersion school, but even SHE had the sense not to teach vosotros, and my dc, who spoke Spanish for the first five years exclusively, has a wonderful accent.

The Spaniards believe that "'vosotros" is perfect grammar "regardless of how Spanish is spoken in Latin America" (we somehow bastardized it into "usted.") I beg your pardon Sir or Madam, but at Princeton when I took a class for Native speakers on how to write and read (analyze text) in Spanish, the teacher did not try to teach us "vosotros" either. Nor did the teachers in Spanish 101. How dare they? The effrontery? Clearly Princeton is teaching ghetto Spanish (and yes, when you compared it to the English spoken in SE DC, you revealed your biases.) You can ask Yale and Harvard what they teach, but I think the answer would be the same. Anyone who is teaching vosotros is not properly teaching Spanish.

Usted is hardly equivalent of how English is spoken in Jamaica or SE DC (hear the prejudice there, they know the difference between street talk and how you address your teacher) or how French is spoken in Haiti (I think they recognize it is not French, and call it a patois).

So let me get your perspective straight here, our kids should be taught "proper Spanish," and the "academically correct way" to do that is vosotros because Latin Americans (and Puerto Ricans) destroyed and bastardized your language. Jamaica also has a patois, that is purely Jamaican and folks from the US cannot understand it. Haitans can mostly speak proper French when they need to. That is also true of most conversations in SE, unless they are using street language to deliberately make sure a white person cannot understand it.

Your insistence on "vosotros" is akin to teaching British in all American schools because we were once their colonies and only they know the proper way to speak. PS in upperclass British, "would you like some salt" translates to us uncivilized Americans as "please pass the salt." We are not teaching the equivalent of Cockney (lower class British speech), it is the sensible way to teach. Eliza Doolittle may very well still exist in Britain, but not in the United States. We no longer teach thee or thou because, like Spaniard Spanish, for most it is antediluvian and irrelevant.

I think my Princeton Professors in the Spanish Department and the Latin American Studies Department (notice it was not the study of people who now usually call themselves Latino in the US, who have chosen to drop the reference to Spain in Hispanic (that would be anthropology probably)), and it was not the Spanish or Spaniard Studies department, it was the Latin American Studies Department, were all ok with usted as a choice. Heck that was what they were taught in Spanish 101. I'm sure at some point it was debated, but the Spaniards lost. You could call Harvard and Yale but I bet they have made the same sensible decision - to teach Spanish the way the MAJORITY of the population speaks it, not the people who at one time "discovered" and colonized our countries, who all seem to prove that a proper Spanish speaker has a deliberate lisp in his own language, but not in English. How odd. But not something to be admired, mimicked, or taught in a Spanish class.

I majored in Anthropology and minored in LAS and oddly enough, the issue of Spain did not come up much after we passed a certain century. The same way the Brits would not come up until WWI after the American Revolution. But Spain came up during the Spanish American War. I suppose you also think that phenotypically Africans are not Puerto Ricans and do not reside in Limon in Costa Rica. And what would you make of the indigenous groups - the descendants of the Aztecs for whom Spanish is a second language? They identify with their pueblos not their countries. I do not believe that most of them have a Spanish drop of blood in them. Is that what makes them bastards? For sure, they did not bastardize Spanish because even to this day they do not speak it properly (by Latin American standards, not by yours, because it is their second language and there is no need for fluency). It was the Spaniards that brought Spanish to Latin America and the people who mixed with them who continued it.

That we have mostly in some countries less Spaniard blood than you would like? You sound like you are the "one drop" type of person (in the Jim Crow days, anyone who looked remotely colored was colored) so I suppose your hierarchy still goes Spaniards, those who should be grateful that we civilized them in Latin America, and those ingrates who refused to accept our superior culture and retained their (inferior) one, like those who speak Nahuatl and come from Guerrero. But perhaps you have not even deigned to visit the former colonies, and socialize with your own kind. To everyone outside this culture the notion that Spaniards are relevant at all and Argentinians are better than the rest would seem absolutely ridiculous. As your insistence that "vosotros" is "proper grammar" seems to me. I cannot WAIT to post this on my FB page to get the reactions of my Latino friends. BTW, it might interest you that at Princeton, while I did not encounter a single Spaniard and had a sole Argentinian as an instructor, the Mexicans and others from "Latin America" certainly thought they were better than the Chicanos (who emigrated from Mexico) and the Puerto Ricans from the Island thought they were better than those from NYC. Enough of my stories.

When did you become God or the academic authority on proper grammar? If it was centuries ago, I would call Harvard and Yale (no need to call Princeton because we do not teach vosotros) to check what is considered "proper" or "correct" grammar, and alternatives that may be mentioned in passing as dialects like vos and vosotros, which they just mention so it does not knock you for a loop, as it did me.

Ouau. How much resentment! I am sorry for you.

+1. Half very sad, half very funny. The lady goes to Princeton and believes some random Professors there constitute the new Real Academia de la Lengua?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a poor translation. Period.

Anonymous wrote:I was the poster who first raised the issue of the postcard we received. I noted I didn't think it was necessarily incorrect (although it does have errors), but just strange. I think the issue - even looking at their webpage now - is that they are attempting to directly translate, word for word, instead of translating MEANING. There are more natural and idiomatic ways of translating things into Spanish.

A concrete example, from their Sustainability page:

ENGLISH: " These national sustainability standards were developed with input from kindergarten through twelfth grade sustainability experts in public, private and teacher education fields."

THEIR SPANISH: "Estas normas nacionales de sostenibilidad fueron desarrolladas con aportaciones de Kindergarten hasta el doceavo grado expertos en sostenibilidad en los campos de educación pública, privada y maestros del mismo campo."

Here, for example, "expertos" should lead, because that's the grammatical order in Spanish. Instead they were trying to directly follow the English text, rather than ensuring the quality of the Spanish translation.

For my part, I don't think this is some massive problem that absolutely is a barrier for us. Yes, errors happen; we are all human! That said, its a concern and I want to check this out as we make our final decision.

That use of "doceavo" is plain horrible. It should be "duodécimo." And, previous PP is right, the translation is hard to comprehend, as it sequences the sentence elements in the wrong order. What does "aportaciones de Kindergarten" mean?

[Anonymous]

Sounds like MV has at least two NEW parent volunteers.

[Anonymous]

My DC speaks absolutely perfect Latin American Spanish. I do not want her to speak Spanish like that of Spain. In the Americas it isn't used, the same way we don't use thou or thee (or other middle ages terminology) in English. I certainly hope MV isn't introducing vosotros and vos (though vos is used in South America, it still isn't common and not taught in American schools).

[Anonymous]

Yes the Spanish is awkward. But I think MV looks great from the outside.

[Anonymous]

I have several complaints about the school, but Spanish isn't one of them. The Spanish is great.

[Anonymous]

What are your complaints?

[Anonymous]

What a bunch of ignoramuses. First, Castilian Spanish, in Spain, is not spoken with a lisp. Second, the proper form, in the language, is to use both ustedes and vosotros. Vos is not grammatically correct, but is commonly used in Argentina. You gringos are not to be believed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes the Spanish is awkward. But I think MV looks great from the outside.

I think the concern is whether you want your child to learn as a native speaker does, or whether you are comfortable with your child learning the language truly as as a second language and not in a full immersion setting. I understand that the use of accents is taught later at MV which is not how native speakers learn. There are grammar mistakes in the signs and several teachers are below native level fluency.

I think these posts are extremely helpful for non-native speakers. How else would you be able to assess the quality of the language if native speakers did not advise? I take these comments very seriously and thank you for providing detailed information on the school.