Visual Link Learn Spanish Newsletter (V:2; I:19)

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During the past few months, we've received numerous e-mails from customers who have tried to learn Spanish with cassettes, books, and classes with little success. They then e-mailed us and were excited that finally, with our course, they were able to speak Spanish. To get your copy of the course, Click Here . Or, go to: www.spanishprograms.com/store.htm  Remember, we have a 6-Month complete-money-back guarantee!

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Learn Spanish Words of the Week -----
Taken from our complete CD-ROM course (Click here to for more info)

	English	Spanish
Monday	to a restaurant	a un restaurante
Tuesday	to the hotel	al hotel
Wednesday	to the pool	a la piscina
Thursday	to the office	a la oficina
Friday	today	hoy
Saturday	tomorrow	mañana
Sunday	tonight	esta noche

Learn Spanish Culture ----- Are there Rest Homes in Latin America?

Where I currently live in the western U.S., there are many rest homes and assisted living centers nearby where elderly people go to live. Within about a four mile radius of our business, there are five different care facilities, one being right next door to our building.

In the assisted living facilities, the people that live there are semi-independent as they usually have their meals cooked for them, entertainment planned, and rides provided to go places. On the other hand, usually in rest homes, elderly people need more constant care, both physical and medical. Both rest homes and assisted living centers are usually very costly.

When I lived in Latin America, I asked a lot of the locals if there were "rest homes" in the area. It took me a while to even figure out what the word for "rest home" was, because not many Latin Americans were familiar with them. After asking many local friends, I finally found out that the word for "rest home" is "asilo de ancianos". The interesting part of that name is that "ancianos" means "ancient" or "elderly", and the word "asilo" means "asylum", "refuge" or "shelter". So basically, translated directly, it would be called an "elderly asylum" or "elderly shelter".

In all of the areas of Latin America I lived in during two years, I only saw one rest home. Since I lived in mostly the mid-size to smaller pueblos, rest homes may have been more prevalent in larger cities.

Now let's explore some of the possible reasons why there aren't as many rest homes in Latin America. Their culture in regard to elderly family members is very different from our culture here in the U.S. Older family members will customarily live with their children in the same house. The reason this happens, according to my observation, is that family ties are very strong, and often the elderly person is not financially independent. In talking to some Latin Americans themselves, they seemed to have the mentality that parents take care of their children when they are younger so that they will, in-turn, take care of them when they get older.

In the U.S., people seem to have more of an independent attitude. As soon as teenagers get old enough, or get married, their parents will gently, or sometimes not so gently, push them out the door. When people become elderly, they often want to stay in their own homes or live in a rest home so they don't burden anyone. Compared to Latin America, few elderly people in the U.S. live with their children.

In Latin America, in addition to the elderly, it is also very common to have newlyweds live with family members. As you can imagine, homes could start to fill up fairly fast in just a few years as married children and grandparents are all living in the same home.

As I have mentioned in the past, there is usually a great attitude of respect among family members in Latin America, especially from children to parents and grandparents. It is great to see the strength of the family in Latin America and the respect they have there as they all live together.

As usual, I would love to hear from our international newsletter subscribers on this topic to hear what the culture is like in your countries.

Moral of the Story: Even though homes can get quite crowded with two or three generations in the same living space, I admire Latin Americans for taking their parents into their homes and making their twilight years more meaningful and enjoyable.

Sneak peek at next week: "The Spanish Jane and John Doe - Who are they?"

¡Hasta luego! (Until later!)


David S. Clark -- President
U.S. Institute of Languages
dave@spanishprograms.com
http://www.spanishprograms.com

P.S. - If you have enjoyed our Learn Spanish newsletters, please forward them to friends or relatives -- that is one of the main ways our business grows.

Responses from Past Learn Spanish Newsletters:

Response #1

Dear David,

It is really interesting that the Latin Americans aren't using sarcasm at all. I am writing to you from Turkey and generally in Turkey, we do use sarcasm but the important point is we use it among our close friends or people from our family.

Thought you'd be interest to know and by the way I like the newsletters a lot. They help me revise my vocabulary.

Hasta luego!
Esra


Response #2

My mom is from Brazil and though she's been here for over 50 years, she has never ever caught on to sarcasm. Your newsletter made me understand now. I always just thought she didn't have much of a sense of humor. However, she does laugh at slapstick comedy. I do think something is lost, though, for those who don't get sarcasm. Thank you for helping me to better understand my own mom. Now, I'm going to try to learn the conjugation of "I like" in Spanish. Thank you.

Suzie


Response #3

Hello Dave,

My name is Izabela. I come from Poland and on the beginning of this year I discovered your link concerning learning Spanish ;) I receive news letters from you and I think it's a very good way of teaching ;)

Sometimes I don't have too much time to learn because of my work - sometimes I'm working till evening but when I receive your e-mail I'm reading it with a pleasure ;) The thing that is very interesting for me it's this part concerning culture ;) It's nice that you try to present many situations that learners can have in their life when they go somewhere to the Latin America or Spain etc

Today I received a news letter where you are talking about sarcasm. So ... in my country, Poland, it's very often that people say something with sarcasm but it's not the way to say negative things - it's rather funny ;) People have the sense of humour in spite of different opinions.

In this case it's the way to see our faults, mistakes etc and nobody is angry that somebody else is sarcastic. Of course these are limits of sarcasm - I think like every where ;)

It's all from my part - i have to come back to my work - thanks for nice e-mails and I hope to speak Spanish soon - one that I need it's some person that I could talk to in Spanish. But I'll think about it ;)

Thanks again

Have a nice day ;)

Izabela Radzik