The First Conversation: Part II

My C.P. and I looked at the different names for family members. For the most part they are even. ‘Grandma’ is ‘abuela’ (for both maternal and paternal grandmothers), ‘madre’ is biological ‘mother’, ‘padre’ is ‘father’, etc .The topic of ‘cousin’ in English struck up an interesting conversation. In Spanish ‘cousin’ is ‘prima’ OR ‘primo’ depending on the gender of the ‘cousin’ (prima being a female cousin, and primo being a male cousin). We talked about why we personally thought about the differences. I have male cousins and female cousins but have never thought about deciphering between them (until I began learning new languages). Where my C.P. said that the concept of not distinguishing between the two was a different thing that she had to grasp. I began to think about why this is and in talking with her further I found how more family oriented her culture is than mine. Typically the mother stays home with the children while the father works to support the family. It would seem to me that in her culture the cousins are more important. Within the conversation she mentioned two of her cousins as examples three or four times. In thinking about my own cousins I would rarely use them as examples (not because they are unworthy), simply because most of them aren’t a very large part of my life. As an example I have cousins that I havn’t seen in years (and they live locally). It is possible that as English speakers we don’t have the need to refer to our cousins and decipher their genders because they aren’t a key point.

Of course this can always be argued (as my C.P. partner did) that we also just have ‘friends’ where in Spanish they also distinguish between a male friend (amigo) or a female friend (amiga). I KNOW that my friends are close to me (when my cousins aren’t). Possibly this just has something to do with the relation between genders in the culture and the relationship you are “allowed” to have with a same gender friend (or cousin) or a opposite gender friend (or cousin). More to be discussed in this topic...

The First Conversation: Part I

I will be referring to my Conversation Partner as C.P. throughout this project. I have the opportunity to speak to someone from the country of Mexico. She arrived in California unable to speak much English. Three years later I am able to speak with her about her language and culture (in English...of course....).

The first assignment required us to look at color sheet and distinguish the different colors. Before she and I met I had also done the project. In looking at our color sheets they were quite similar. She and I had more or less the same wide range of colors. (Including pink, purple, blue, green, red, lights, darks, etc)