The following essay explains why nothing has been posted to the website since late October. Enjoy!!

Word Count 908

Perfecting Your Spanish

Using the MMT

I just came back (11/21/21) from a three-week odyssey to Guadalajara, Mexico, where I had the ignominious opportunity to enhance my somewhat meager Spanish language speaking skills. Granted, a person can’t really improve their ability to speak another language in just three short weeks, but it’s the thought that counts in this particular situation, right? (keep telling yourself that by the way…).  Actually, I got quite a bit more out of this experience than I bargained for in terms of Spanish not being an easy language to learn and speak.  Particularly when you’re in my age demographic. Continuing to lose more hair whenever I stare in the mirror.

Luckily, I’ve come up with a sure-fire way to improve this Spanish language speaking skill thing, and henceforth we’ll refer to this teaching model as the Mucho Moron Technique, or MMT, for all you acronym obsessed types out there. The MMT is definitely an unorthodox learning method, but it sort of works (emphasis on the words, “sort of”), and during my three weeks in Guadalajara, I decided to use it whenever I found myself stumbling about.

First off, let me point this out; The MMT is similar in scope to an earlier learning technique I stumbled upon during those 2 years of living and working in Kenya all those years ago. In this case it was known as the SST, or Stupid Swahili Technique. The SST was always guaranteed to place me firmly in the camp of being able to stumble (quite admirably I might add…) in numerous cultural interactions. Most, if not all of my time in East Africa in fact. Basically, I learned just enough of the lingua franca to get by, and not much more. Learning the language was something I did do, but let’s be honest shall we. State emphatically that I never got to the level of talking rocket science in Swahili. I did learn to speak the language, but basically at an advanced primary school level. Think of it this way, at a level beyond your basic tourist-safari lingua franca. That’s all we need to say concerning the subject.

So what exactly is this MMT, and how did D. Swanson use it so effectively to justify all those incidents of ineptitude during the past three weeks? In a nutshell, all MMT interactions utilize a plethora of hand gestures, lots of Spanish pronunciation in excruciatingly slow, mispronounced ways, tons of sentence structure assembly with me putting all sorts of words out of place, and a strange look painted all over my face and that of the Mexican listening.  You’ll be happy to know the MMT is extremely effective as evidenced by the fact that I managed to get through a number of interactions. This included daily bus-rides, a visit to the main city park where I attended a WTA (World Tennis Association) Woman’s match, and the addition to all sorts of restaurant trips. It works, maybe not so effectively, but I somehow managed to get by. Are you still skeptical? If not, then you’re definitely being way too naïve.

Some context concerning this latest cultural exchange. Guadalajara is a beautiful city. Often referred to as Jardin Cuidad. Or the Mexican, “City-of-Gardens,”; It’s a fantastic place with a huge number of tree lined streets, flowers all over the place, and fountains doting the landscape every time you turned your shoulder in one direction or the other. That having been said, it’s a tailor-made, perfect “gringo environment” for getting one’s self lost, missing a bus stop, and/or wandering aimlessly. These things happened to yours truly during numerous strolls both in, and out of school on most days. Made for an interesting three weeks too, and we can blame it on my obsession with the use of the MMT to affectively get by.

The school I attended was great, and I’m pretty sure they often seemed to smile reassuringly at my inability to learn as affectively as I was supposed to. At the end of quite a few school days I wondered to myself, hopefully these people will sympathize with my plight.  If they don’t, then maybe they have the ability to comprehend just how deep my vast stores of ineptitude are. Here, the MMT comes into the picture once again.

Despite all this, I made it through the three-week Guadalajara odyssey, and now I’m even thinking of going back there in the spring to learn more of the language Maybe by then, my efforts to market the MMT App. will have succeeded wonderfully. This will allow me to have more “dinero” in my pocket. Due of course to the fact that I will have developed a number of other language learning techniques which will have the money come flowing in.

Let’s say you’re in Berlin for an indefinite period of time, and you’d like to learn a few words of the German language. In this case you’ll download the BLT, or” Blodian Language Technique App.. One guess as to what the German translation for the word, “Blodian” is?

You’re traveling in Tahiti and fancy learning a bit of the French language. In this case you’ll download the PIT, orPlusieur Idiot Technique. The possibilities are endless, as is the fact that none of this makes much sense. Then again, most of my attempts to speak Spanish during the past three-weeks didn’t make much sense to those listening either.