Some Gloating

My Spanish is a bit rough so far on this visit. It's my own fault, as I hadn't been taking a class or even doing much reading while in New York. I manage conversations pretty well, but I'm creaky. It's a bit better now, but I'm pretty hard on myself, hearing every stumble and stutter and slip-up long after my companion has moved on.

So I don't feel too bad about gloating about one of my happiest Spanish moments ever. Martha and I went to see grim but beautiful German movie The White Ribbon (showtime 10:10 on a Wednesday night! My schedule here really is different.) and I followed the Spanish subtitles quite well. Afterwards, I asked Martha the meaning of comadrona. Turns out it's a midwife. Now, I didn't feel too bad for not knowing the Spanish word for midwife. But then Martha said there's another word for wet nurse, but she couldn't remember what it was.

And I said, "you mean nodriza?" And she said, "Thanks, that's it." And we carried on our conversation.

I actually knew the word for wet nurse! And no big deal, I just casually offer it and she says thanks and on we go, jabbering in Spanish. I was pretty pleased with myself (and obviously still am).

As it happens, I had just read the word in a novel this week, and remembered it because it looks funny. (Often I don't remember new words.) I hadn't looked it up—I got the meaning from context. That works well for very concrete words, like wet nurse. For other words, I can often infer a kind of blurry semantic aura, if not a precise meaning.

To go back to beating myself, I should honestly report that what I actually said was "you mean nodrizo?" getting the final letter wrong, which was kinda stupid because it makes sense that a wet nurse would be feminine, but hey, I'm not going to feel too bad about that just now.