It has been a week since Sonya and I have landed in Guatemala.
We have started our Spanish classes at the picture perfect garden school in Casa Rosario by the shores of the Lake Atitlan. It has been somewhat strange for me to learn a European language, Spanish, from a fellow colonized subject. It should not be; after all the teachers I had in the U.S.A. were from Mexico and Argentina. As I think more about this, I am beginning to think that the reason for this dissonance is that I expected Spanish in Guatemala to be no different than English in India: only the elite upper and upper middle classes to be speaking it.
India is not Thailand or Kerela with near cent per cent literacy, and I was expecting the same in Guatemala.
However here, everyone speaks Spanish: the immigration official, the shuttle-bus driver, the chicken-bus driver,¨El capitan¨ of the launches on the Lake Atitlan, the auto-drivers (tuk-tuk), the old woman in the market selling rounds of sin-azucar chocolate wrapped in leaves, the woman making tortillas, even the little girl who is vending peanuts and fava-beans. India, if any of them had spoken English to me- I would be shocked.
The other reason for the dissonance is that my mind is tricked into believing I am in India time and again: physically the way I have to manoeuver my body in the market place is the same as India; I need nimble feet and alert eyes, rather than the encumbrance of a shopping cart on the smooth floor of a supermarket. Concrete structures topped with exposed twisted iron rebars promise future vertical construction. Aurally, the noises I hear are the same: four-stroke engines from the same vehicles- Bajaj Autos and Pulsars, dogs barking so louldly at night that they wake me, distant roosters and ashtmatic trucks. And wood-smoke and diesel exhaust smell the same.
The kids playing soccer in the street below do it in Spanish. I was expecting to hear more of the local language and be lost in known non-comprehension, similar to the way I do not understand conversations on the bus or the train in Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu, and not be taxing my brain trying to understand what they were saying.
My Spanish teacher who is of Mayan heritage learnt Spanish in school; she did not learn her native Tzu´tuhil in school, she is in the same boat as I am with Bengali: she can speak it- but cannot write it, according to her there are less than a dozen Tzu´tuhil literates in San Pedro- a town of around 10,000 people. She tells me that her children are now learning Tzu´tuhil in school with the Roman alphabet.
I am pondering about the ways in which language influences the marketing of products of daily consumption. How do certain memes take on significance in one culture and not others. For example would one buy soap or beer in India if it were called ¨Murga Brand¨ or in the USA as ¨Rooster Brand¨?
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We have started our Spanish classes at the picture perfect garden school in Casa Rosario by the shores of the Lake Atitlan. It has been somewhat strange for me to learn a European language, Spanish, from a fellow colonized subject. It should not be; after all the teachers I had in the U.S.A. were from Mexico and Argentina. As I think more about this, I am beginning to think that the reason for this dissonance is that I expected Spanish in Guatemala to be no different than English in India: only the elite upper and upper middle classes to be speaking it.
India is not Thailand or Kerela with near cent per cent literacy, and I was expecting the same in Guatemala.
However here, everyone speaks Spanish: the immigration official, the shuttle-bus driver, the chicken-bus driver,¨El capitan¨ of the launches on the Lake Atitlan, the auto-drivers (tuk-tuk), the old woman in the market selling rounds of sin-azucar chocolate wrapped in leaves, the woman making tortillas, even the little girl who is vending peanuts and fava-beans. India, if any of them had spoken English to me- I would be shocked.
The other reason for the dissonance is that my mind is tricked into believing I am in India time and again: physically the way I have to manoeuver my body in the market place is the same as India; I need nimble feet and alert eyes, rather than the encumbrance of a shopping cart on the smooth floor of a supermarket. Concrete structures topped with exposed twisted iron rebars promise future vertical construction. Aurally, the noises I hear are the same: four-stroke engines from the same vehicles- Bajaj Autos and Pulsars, dogs barking so louldly at night that they wake me, distant roosters and ashtmatic trucks. And wood-smoke and diesel exhaust smell the same.
The kids playing soccer in the street below do it in Spanish. I was expecting to hear more of the local language and be lost in known non-comprehension, similar to the way I do not understand conversations on the bus or the train in Andhra Pradesh or Tamil Nadu, and not be taxing my brain trying to understand what they were saying.
My Spanish teacher who is of Mayan heritage learnt Spanish in school; she did not learn her native Tzu´tuhil in school, she is in the same boat as I am with Bengali: she can speak it- but cannot write it, according to her there are less than a dozen Tzu´tuhil literates in San Pedro- a town of around 10,000 people. She tells me that her children are now learning Tzu´tuhil in school with the Roman alphabet.
I am pondering about the ways in which language influences the marketing of products of daily consumption. How do certain memes take on significance in one culture and not others. For example would one buy soap or beer in India if it were called ¨Murga Brand¨ or in the USA as ¨Rooster Brand¨?
I recall in really obscure, remote locations that I finally crossed patbs with a few indigenous Guatemalans that didn't know much Spanish.
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