Vocabulary

Lesson One:
In Spanish, the word doy means I give. Learning that word in my high school Spanish class, I was surrounded with quiet snickering. "Doy," people said to one another with false irritation in their voice, "doy, doy, doy." In English it is an old form of the word duh. It is the kind of word students are discouraged from using in class. So they chuckled to themselves when they could raise their hands and solemnly pronounce the word, knowing it was exactly what their teachers wanted to hear.

Lesson Two:
Spanish speakers have different ways of saying I love you. Different phrases translate to the English love, but carry nuances within the language. Te quiero. Te amo. They are two different forms of love.

Lesson Three:
In English, we have a million different types of love, but only one word. "I love you," I say to him, defining it in such complicated terms that even I do not know their limits. In saying I love you, I am saying a thousand other phrases, each of them one part of an illustration I am trying to create. He doesn�t bother saying love. It is an empty word for him, and emptiness is not worth containing in the space of four letters. My definition of love is like the Spanish doy. His is the English.

Lesson Four:
People who speak Spanish have a common problem when learning English: they are used to using an article before every noun. Put into English, this adds a distance to intimate things. "We had the sex," a Spanish speaker might say. He is like the Spanish in this way. Sex is a the, an it. Something he can do without touching.