Dudas (Doubts)

Before moving on to the next lesson, Spanish teachers in my life have often asked the class, "Dudas?" as in, "Do you have any doubts/questions/concerns/general lack of understanding?"

While there have been several times I've been asked "Dudas?," I have never exclaimed "Si! Tengo muchas dudas!" though I'm generally confused about what's going on when someone has been trying to explain grammar to me in Spanish.

How many of you knew what any verb or subject was called before you learned foreign grammar? I knew basically nothing, except for a little bit Mrs. Serafin taught me in eighth grade and tricks from Testtakers SAT prep.

In Spanish, there are a thousand different 'past' tenses. I have gone, you have gone, I thought you went, you went, she would have gone, she was going, she went with him until I came, I was going to go, but you had gone last week before she left. etc. etc.

The subjunctive. I have learned and relearned this stubborn verbform every year since tenth grade but it doesn't exist in English, so I have nothing to translate it to - I still sort of just guess where it goes. Pluscuamperfecto, for example - it's fun to say, it's harder to remember. Advice can be given in the conditional or the subjunctive but sometimes, in the infinitive - and if I gave that advice yesterday, it's probably a past tense. But if I gave it this morning, it's an immediate past tense which is a relative of the perfect past. Maybe because today was perfect? Even if today was the worst day ever, it's probably still the verb form called 'perfect' but I am definitely living my grammarlife in the imperfect because I just can't form a sentence perfectly using the perfect.

It turns out I should have more 'dudas' in other things. Earlier, I alluded to a 'pico' I met. I should have said 'pijo' - a 'pico' is more of a 'nibble,' so I had thought the name for Spanishprepster as 'nibble' to be weird. Turns out his name is also JuanLuis, not JoseLuis. I should have doubted myself more, considering it took ten days to figure out the names of the people I was living with. So, thank you to my program director Celeste for 1. reading my blog, 2. correcting me on 'pijo,' 3. entertaining my absurd presentations over the last three weeks. One presentation included the Spanish version of the song 'Wavin' Flag' in our lesson on learning about Spanish music. My In The News presentation was about tennis, rather than the economic crisis, forest fires, the upcoming election, or something meaningful. I thought RafaNadal was meaningful. So does my host dad. Waytogo.

Anyway, I have some dudas about my progress here, my ability to conjugate verbs, and how well I understand anything going on around me.

I know one thing for sure: As I was brushing my teeth this morning, I looked in the mirror and thought, "Today is going to be a great day. My life is great. Muy bien."

The best thing to be secure about is how happy I am. The rest, I can doubt. I could doubt. I have doubted. I will doubt. I had doubted, but then I no longer doubted.

Verbs, verbs, verbs. Whatever. I'm still loca de contenta con mi vida. Googletranslate if you can't dissect that one. I'm off to estudiar for mis examenes mañana.