Why are men so...bleh?
First a little background, for the unitiated: my husband is from Argentina and his parents still live there. Calling is expensive, so we rely primarily on the internet for communication. His mother sends him emails, which go unanswered. Why, I'm not sure. I haven't really got a straight answer on that one yet. Anyway, so she doesn't get a reply, so she freaks out and calls to make sure we are okay. She has started sending emails to me since I actually reply. The only problem: she only speaks Spanish and I don't speak that much at the moment. So, I get email in Spanish that I either have to have my husband read for me or I break out the Spanish-English dictionary and pray that I'm getting it right. I then try to reply in Spanish, using my fabulous vocabulary that I'm building through the Spanish Word of the Day. :) It never fails that I don't know how to say what I want and I have to ask my husband for help. He gets frustrated with me and tells me to email his mom in English and she'll translate it. I really don't want to do that to her. I've tried drafting an email in Word, sending it to my husband so he can translate it and send it back, and it sits on his computer until what I've written is no longer relevant. Keep in mind that none of this would be an issue if he would just reply to the email that he gets from his mother. Arrgh! I guess if nothing else, it's a good chance to put my Spanish to use. It's just frustrating to me that I'm stuck in the middle of this because he won't spare 2 minutes to send her a reply. He spends half the night posting on Ars Technica. But he can't send an email to his mother. Okay. Got that out of my system. Time to eat.
posted by carrie at 10/06/2004 05:36:00 p.m.
8 Comments:
I now get spa and hot tub ads on your site, does this mean you are bikini skinny?
You know, responding to my Mom is hard for some reason. I will actually write her back, but not promptly. I will actually return her calls, but not promptly. I just don't know why, but she is not alone, I have always been that way. I would much rather be there. Even when I was dating and my wife called, I would not talk for hours, I just told her to hang tight and I would come over.
Try some of the online translation sites, they can do English to Spanish and will do about 200 words at a time. You can quickly make some minor edits and then let hubby fix the rest. Besides being quick some of the translation will be really funny.
ARGH!! hahaha I am not a fan of online translators..but then again, that could just be the teacher in me.;)
Send her short messages to let her know everything is OK...make hubby deal with the long stories. :)
I don't know why men are so dumb...I have found it to be the same with all my male friends too..they don't do well on telephones or emails or communication in general LOL :)
What do you mean men don't communicate well? We choose not to write, use the phone, or even conversation. We use emotion, it literally pours from us, can't you feel my communications? LOL
I'm not getting the hot tub ads, just ones to date sexy single hispanics. I already have one, thank you. :)
Okay, I try not to use those online translators because
1) they usually don't translate what you want to say correctly unless it's something very basic.
2) I'm actually trying to learn something. At least if I ask my hubby, I can get an explanation of why it's that way so that I can file it away for future reference.
3) They don't really work on the Argentine slang that I sometimes get in these emails. There's a whole other world out there called Lunfardo. In some cases, it's a sort of combination of Spanish and Italian, in other cases it's a real Spanish word used in a different sense, and finally there are some words where the syllables are reversed. An example of this would be feca. This is café, syllabically reversed. It can get confusing. As if it's not bad enough to learn all the Spanish grammar and everything, I have like this whole other language to contend with.
I wish it were as simple as just sending emails saying "Estamos bien." She wants to know about us, what we're doing, how the kid is, what he's learned lately, etc. And my husband considers the discussion of those things best left to women. I don't mind telling her the details of our lives, but I just don't have the vocabulary to do it yet. And the fact that he gets frustrated/upset with me for not knowing just makes me even more frustrated/upset about the overall situation.
feca huh? hahah That's a new one for me...and doesn't look very sanitary to me;) haha
I have friends in Argentina and I buy calling cards to call them. I get them online. If you shop around you can get really good deals. I got one with like 8 hours for 10 bucks.
http://dictionary.reference.com/translate/text.html
here is one -- just incase... you need one in a pinch.
http://dictionary.reference.com/translate/text.html
here is one -- just incase... you need one in a pinch.
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