Читать книгу Talking to the stars - Elena García Pérez - Страница 13

EXPERIENCES

The alarm clock rang, Elena jumped up, she was beaming. Pipilet had already got up and was already in the library.

“What a surprise, what are you doing, nerd?”

“Looking at these books.”

“Have you had breakfast yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Come on, boy."

The two went to the kitchen for breakfast. Elena made two cups of chocolate and took churros out of the freezer; when Pipilet tried them, he did the same thing as the night before, he licked and licked. After breakfast, Elena suggested that the best thing to do would be to take a shower and get dressed so she could get going and start the first Spanish class, an idea that seemed great to our friend. An hour later they were both ready to start, but what was to Elena's surprise when she realised that her friend was a real sponge, since everything she was teaching him, he learned immediately.

“But how do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Learn so fast. Everything I tell you, you record in your brain in a jiffy.”

“Well, when I hear them spoken they’re like musical notes. Think that I am getting used to expressing myself through music, and language is music too. The vocal cords of humans are like the strings of my guitar, they move and make sounds. So, words are sounds and to me they are like the musical notes I hear on my guitar.”

“It’s true, I’ve never thought about it before. So, you mean that you are going to learn languages with ease, isn’t that right?”

“Well, with the vocabulary I won’t have any kind of problems, but I need to learn the verb conjugation well and therein lies the problem. I heard that Spanish is difficult to speak correctly because of the number of irregular verbs it has, and that both the indicative and subjunctive tenses are spoken with great precision, much more than in other languages, and above all the verb ‘ser’ and ‘estar’, and the por, and the para... It’s complicated, isn’t it?”

“Well, the truth is that I can’t tell you well, I don’t know many languages. I am only studying English and French. To come to think of it, what you say may be true. In the French language, for example, the indefinite past tenses are not spoken in everyday life, so as if they did not exist, since they are only used by writers for their novels; In general, they use the past tense, for the verb ser and estar they have only one verb être, with ‘por’ and ‘para’ the same thing happens, both are said as pour. So, it’s easier, I’d say, right? As for the English language, there is a list of irregular verbs, so once you learn these, they solve your life a little. However, this does not happen with Spanish, since there is no list with all the irregular tenses since it would be endless. So, do you plan to learn many languages, Pipilet?”

“Yes, my idea is to travel the world, so I will have no choice if I want to make friends. And I also want to learn cultures, history, music and gastronomy, don’t forget.”

For three intensive hours they were talking about verb conjugations, as well as the different verb tenses, both indicative and subjunctive, and when to use each of them.

Elena suddenly realised that she had not yet asked Pipilet if he wanted to meet her friends that same afternoon.

“Excuse me, I had forgotten (past perfect tense of the verb forget), yesterday my friend Claudia heard you (simple past) playing the guitar, so she called me (simple past) on the phone and said she would love to meet you , and she has also proposed to meet with the rest of our friends, what do you think? Do I send her an SMS saying yes?”

“Hurray!! It can’t get any better! So I’m going to make new friends, right? Come on, come on, don’t wait another moment... Imperative, right?”

Elena smiled, gave her approval with her head and reached for her mobile to send a message, twenty minutes later she had the answer:

‘We will all wait for you impatiently by the river, in The Pirate’s corner; at four. Kisses.”

“Shall we take a break from our grammar class?” Elena suggested.

“Very well then.”

“But before, I have to tell you that Claudia has sent me a message saying that they are waiting for us at four in the afternoon.”

“Brilliant.”

“Pipilet, I suggest that we rest for a couple of hours and continue with the conversation you started yesterday with my parents, since I am very interested in continuing to talk about life and friends, okay? Do you think it’s OK?”

“No problem, friend, in two hours we’ll continue.”

“Okay, so we’ll meet out in the garden in two hours.”

“Perfect, getting some fresh air will do us both good.”

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