Speaking Their Language

(originally published 10/30/15 on Valparaiso University Study Abroad Blog)

I took my first Spanish class in ninth grade. I remember lamenting to my teacher that there wasn’t a magic pill that could suddenly render one fluent in a foreign language. In my mostly white, suburban community south of Cleveland, Ohio, I never really experienced international culture nor did I have to wrestle with diversity issues. Thus, foreign language remained a superfluity to me, a bland thing of academia.

Gavin with Professor Zamora-Breckenridge

In 2006 I came to Valpo as an eager young science student majoring in meteorology and with one final language course to knock out. I dispassionately enrolled in an intermediate Spanish course with Prof. Nelly Zamora-Breckenridge that fall. This course would prove to be the spark that ignited the passion for language and international communication that burns strongly within me today.

Prof. Zamora-Breckenridge, a native Spanish speaker from Colombia, succeeded in enamoring me with her birth language in two ways: first, the novelty of conversing in a foreign tongue with a native user was a skill that suddenly intoxicated me, perhaps with the same enthusiasm that young children often have for codes and secret communication. More importantly, the relevant global topics she worked into her lessons opened my eyes to a vast new world of social issues and complexities. I suddenly needed to devote myself to learning this new language, this lens through which I could continue to see the world more clearly.

Over the following three-and-a-half years I took almost every Spanish course that Prof. Zamora-Breckenridge offered and graduated in 2010 with a Spanish minor alongside a mathematics minor and a major in meteorology.

Recess with Peruvian kindergarteners

My one regret (truly) during my time at Valpo was that I didn’t pursue the opportunity to study abroad. Realizing this mistake upon graduation, I arranged to travel down to Peru in the summer of 2010 to volunteer for six weeks at a rural mountain kindergarten outside of Cusco. I saw more poverty than I had ever seen in my life. I also saw environmental damage that I couldn’t believe: the ceaseless inky spew of old vehicles, dirty streams choked with refuse, and plastic waste cascading down hillside after hillside. But I also had a ceaselessly full heart from interacting with so many people and especially children bursting with pure joy – all in their native tongue. The kids were wonderfully blunt when I would make Spanish mistakes, after which they would go right back to being my best friend. What an incredible way to hone one’s language skills without fear of judgment or shame!

I came back to the States and experienced the “reverse culture shock” that I had until then believed to be just an exaggeration – namely, utter apathy for acquisitive power, social media angst, and numerous other tritenesses of consumer America to which I was previously immune.

I am currently about a year away from obtaining my PhD in atmospheric science at Colorado State University. Science continues to interest me but language and international communication continue to interest me even more. I have served as a translator and blog manager for the International Environmental Data Recovery Organization. I have traveled to the hurricane-prone Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico during two summers to teach an introductory meteorology course in Spanish at a university that has a goal of starting their own atmospheric science department.

Valpo graduates on the border of Brazil and Argentina

And in 2011 I started teaching myself Brazilian Portuguese with my knowledge of Spanish, a fairly similar language, as a foundation. Learning and teaching through this beautiful language of Brazil is now a full-time hobby of mine. Brazil is a rapidly developing country, but with a population only 7% of which can speak English. I view this as an incredible opportunity: very infrequently do native English speakers have the chance to travel to a foreign country and be forced to speak the language of that country. This is a blessing and a curse. A curse, because it requires effort and non-laziness on the part of the American. A blessing, because communicating with a foreigner in their own language is truly an amazing experience. I mean it. In Brazil, this is not only possible but practically required.

Playing tambourine in a group of Brazilian capoeristas

Alongside my doctoral studies I now run a Portuguese-language YouTube channel for Brazilians who are learning English. Myself, my wife Lauren Roy [née Overstreet, VU ’11], and four other Valpo graduates traveled together down to the World Cup in Brazil in 2014. And I have aspirations of becoming a scientific translator of both Portuguese and Spanish in the future, helping to play a role in uniting the international efforts to address global climate change and environmental destruction.

There is no magic pill that will effortlessly grant one the ability to speak a foreign language. Learning a language takes years upon years of focus and dedication. But the ultimate reward of this effort is an unbelievably beautiful thing: there is no clearer way to “see” the world than by speaking with its inhabitants.

Gavin Roy is a 2010 Valpo graduate with a meteorology major and a Spanish and mathematics minor. During his time at Valpo, Professor Nelly Zamora-Breckenridge really instilled a love of language for him. After graduation, Gavin volunteered in a kindergarten for 6 weeks in Peru. He also traveled down to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico during the summer semesters of 2012 and 2013 to teach an introductory meteorology course in Spanish in the Engineering Department of the Autonomous University of the Yucatan. Currently, he studies at Colorado State University getting his PhD in atmospheric science. Additionally, he has been aggressively teaching himself Brazilian Portuguese, which is an enchanting and rapidly growing (in influence) language that is somewhat similar to Spanish.

"Big Four" Sports Championship Winners by Year on One Spreadsheet (NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB)

"Hey does anyone remember who won the NBA Championship in 2004?"

"Yeah, wasn't it the Spurs?"

"No wait the Spurs were 2003 and 2005 right?"

"Well who won the Stanley Cup in 2004? I know the Patriots won the '04 Super Bowl...."

"Can someone look it up on their phone?"

I can't count the number of times this has happened to me, and it often happens in trivia leagues when phones aren't allowed and the bastion of raw memory still reigns supreme. When championships occurred when I was an adolescent they were easy to remember because every year of your life then is so memorable as you are experiencing new things and climbing the grades through high school. Moments in time help you secure the knowledge of this championship alongside fragmented recollections of a family vacation, your first kiss, a college visit.

For example, I remember the Yankees beating the Mets in 2000 because I watched several of the games at 6th grade youth camp. I remember the Spurs beating the Pistons in 2005 because I was about to go on a teen biking trip with several friends from Detroit. I remember the Colts beating the Bears in Super Bowl XLI because I watched it in a fraternity house as a freshman at Valparaiso University, about halfway between the two fan bases.

As I've gotten older though, despite having felt as though I've lived a varied and dynamic life, the years go by and I increasingly forget who won what when. Was it 2011 or 2012 that the Mavs won? Did the Giants really win the World Series three times while I wasn't looking? And most recently, a simple Who won the Stanley Cup in 2014?

I couldn't remember.

Besides remembering the championships that occurred during one's lifetime there are of course all the past ones that need recalling, like the fact that the Cincinnati Reds beat the 1919 Black Sox, the Toronto Maple Leafs used to be good 1967 and before, and that the poor Buffalo Bills lost four straight Super Bowls from the specific years 1991-1994. And the even more obscure ones: in 1970 the champions were the Kansas City Chiefs, the Boston Bruins, the New York Knicks, and the Baltimore Orioles.

Then I began thinking: rather than remembering each rundown of championship winners individually (i.e. the list of Super Bowl winners, the list of World Series winners, etc.) why not try to mentally catalog by year who won which championship?

A few examples: I remember that the Angels won the World Series in 2002 which helped me remember that the Lakers won the championship that same year. The last year the Philadelphia Flyers won the Stanley Cup, their cross-state rival city Pittsburgh had just won Super Bowl IX. The Knicks were runners-up for three straight seasons from 1951-1953 but most of their fans couldn't have been upset for long since the Yankees won the World Series in each of those years.

I scoured the Internet for a unifying graphic or spreadsheet sorted in such a way that the years lined up and you could just read across the page. Nothing existed. Not even on Wikipedia.

So now, I give to you, for the first time:

  The Big 4 Champions Spreadsheet

Screenshot. Click link above for the full PDF.

As of the time of writing, it begins with the Boston Americans winning the World Series in 1903 and stretches all the way to the Cleveland Cavaliers losing the NBA Finals in 2015 (last night). I will continue to update it as future championships warrant.

Have at it, my trivia savvy friends. Never again will you be the guy in the jersey jogging your memory going "umm......"

Silent Heroes

Published in the Fort Collins Coloradoan on April 25, 2015:

Nassim Taleb, in his 2007 book "The Black Swan" on the fragility of our assumptions about risks, proposes a thought experiment called "the silent hero." In this thought experiment we imagine a legislator who manages to enact a law that goes into universal effect on Sept. 10, 2001, imposing continuously locked bulletproof doors in every commercial airplane cockpit. This law is not a popular measure among the airlines, as it elevates costs and inconveniences the lives of the airline personnel.

This legislator who imposed locks on cockpit doors (thereby preventing the horrific deaths of Sept. 11, 2001) gets no statues in public squares, not so much as a quick mention of his contribution in his obituary. Seeing how superfluous his measure was, and how it squandered resources, the public, with great help from the airlines, might well kick him out of office. He will die with the impression of having done nothing useful.

These "silent heroes," who unknowingly save lives with preventative measures, go unnoticed.

In Fort Collins, City Manager Darin Atteberry has facilitated the crusade to waive the requirement of trains to sound their horns as they pass through over a mile of Old Town. In so doing, he endeavors to repeal an existing "silent hero" measure from 2005 meant to prevent the loss of life.

A ban on train horns in Florida in the early '90s led to a doubling in accidents during the duration of the ban, according to a Federal Railroad Administration report, and I couldn't help but ask myself when I heard about Atteberry's proposed quiet zone for trains: When the first preventable train-related fatality happens in Old Town, will he and those who helped pass this measure experience guilt? Unlike in the cockpit door example, we will know precisely who could have prevented this accident.

My wife and I live in the Mason Street Flats downtown, directly next to the train tracks. We can personally attest that the train noise is at times deafening. However, we consider this clamor a small price to pay to avoid a preventable death: a kid on a bike, a green teen in a stickshift, an unfamiliar tourist.

Atteberry claims that sufficient research has been done to ensure that a fatal train accident in Old Town will only happen once every 500 years. Are we willing to go all-in on these formulated odds? However well-intentioned these blind statistics may be, the fact of the matter is that Fort Collins is a dynamic and rapidly growing city with increasingly more pedestrians and traffic in the downtown corridor and along the train tracks. A crash or fatality, especially with this added growth, cannot simply be predicted like the outcome of a series of coin tosses.

To repeal the effective preventative measure of train horns sounding through Old Town Fort Collins, while ostensibly popular, would be downright foolish and undoubtedly more risk-prone — all for the silly sake of assuaging our ears.

We strongly urge you to be a silent hero by voicing your opposition to this proposed train horn waiver, which is still under review, to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) at Regulations.gov.

Top 11 Spanish-to-Portuguese Grammar Differences

This post serves as a companion guide to our YouTube video, Top 11 Spanish-to-Portuguese Grammar Differences. It is also a follow-up to our first post about the top 11 pronunciation differences.

This video is again meant for native English speakers who are proficient in Spanish and are trying to use this proficiency to learn Brazilian Portuguese, a very similar language. By no means is this a complete and comprehensive guide to all the grammar differences between the two languages, however. This is a quick overview meant to expose you to what I have felt to be the biggest and most important differences while learning to speak Portuguese. Spurred by these tips, I encourage you to dive into each grammar difference further by using more in-depth resources, including those I've listed at the end of this post.

In the YouTube video I briefly discuss each grammar rule then have Gláuber (Brazil), Zitely (Mexico), and myself (USA) read the Portuguese (P), Spanish (S), and English (E) respective translations. These are reproduced below, with a brief overview of each rule (I go more in depth in the video):

1) Tú becomes você; nosotros becomes nós or a gente

P: Você vai ao supermercado?
S: ¿Vas (tú) al supermercado?
E: Are you going to the supermarket?

P: Como você está?
S: ¿Cómo estás (tú)?
E: How are you?

P: A gente é americano. Or: Nós somos americanos.
S: (Nosotros) Somos americanos.
E: We are American.

P: A gente foi ao cinema. Or: Nós fomos ao cinema.
S: (Nosotros) Fuimos al cine.
E: We went to the movie theater.


2) Less dropping of the subject pronoun (I, you, he/she, us, they, etc.)

P: Você viu esse filme?
S: ¿ (Tú) Viste esa película?
E: Did you see that movie?

P: Eu me sinto bem.
S: (Yo) Me siento bien.
E: I feel fine.


3) More dropping of the object pronoun (it, this, that, these, those, etc.)

P: Você viu esse filme? Sim, eu vi.
S: ¿Viste esa película? Sí, lo vi.
E: Did you see that film? Yes, I saw it.

P: Você compraria essa casa? Não, eu não compraria.
S: ¿Comprarías esa casa? No, no lo compraría.
E: Would you buy that house? No, I wouldn't buy it.


4) Respond to yes/no questions by conjugating the verb!

P: Foi ele que disse isso? Sim, foi ele.
S: ¿Fue él quien dijo eso? Sí.
E: Was it him that said that? Yes.

P: Você gosta de queijo? Não, eu não gosto.
S: ¿Te gusta el queso? No.
E: Do you like cheese? No.


5) Gostar de is a direct verb, as in English

P: Eles gostam de jogar futebol.
S: Les gusta jugar fútbol.
E: They like to play soccer.

P: Eu gostaria de viajar ao Brasil.
S: Me gustaría viajar a Brasil.
E: I would like to travel to Brazil.


6) Many verbs that are reflexive in Spanish are not reflexive in Portuguese. Thank God!

P: Eu levantei muito cedo.
S: Me levanté muy temprano.
E: I rose very early.

P: Ela esqueceu a resposta.
S: Se le olvidó la respuesta.
E: She forgot the answer.

P: Senta aqui.
S: Siéntate.
E: Sit down.


7) Indirect object pronoun (me, te, les/lhes, nos, etc.) placement

If the sentence only has one verb, both languages place it in front of the verb:
P: Carlota me disse a verdade.
S: Carlota me dijo la verdad.
E: Carlota told me the truth.

P: Martin nos deu o livro.
S: Martín nos dio el libro.
E: Martin gave us the book.

But if the sentence has two verbs, Spanish puts it before or after both verbs but Portuguese typically sticks it right in the middle:
P: Eles querem te mandar uma carta.
S: Ellos quieren mandarte una carta.
E: They want to send a letter to you.

P: Maria vai me dizer a verdade.
S: María me va a decir la verdad.
E: Maria is going to tell me the truth.


8) No personal a, and no a after the verb ir

P: Ela contratou ele.
S: Ella contrató a él.
E: She hired him.

P: Eu vou fazer o mesmo.
S: Voy a hacer lo mismo.
E: I'm going to do the same thing.

P: Eles vão buscar o secretário.
S: Ellos van a buscar al secretario.
E: They are going to look for the secretary.


9) Articles (i.e the) are often included before proper names and possessive pronouns (my, your, his/her, our, their, etc.)

P: A Laura está cansada.
S: Laura está cansada.
E: Laura's tired.

P: A Laura é a minha amiga.
S: Laura es mi amiga.
E: Laura is my friend.

P: Eu vou dar o meu relógio ao Marcelo.
S: Le voy a dar mi reloj a Marcelo.
E: I'm going to give my watch to Marcelo.


10) The preterite is used to convey the present perfect sense in Portuguese (these examples are explained better in the video!)

P: Você já comeu comida japonesa? (NOT "Você tem comido..."!)
S: ¿Has comido comida japonesa?
E: Have you (ever) eaten Japanese food?

P: Ainda não vi esse filme.
S: Todavía no he visto esa película.
E: I still haven't seen that movie.


11) The future subjunctive is still actively used in Portuguese

P: Se você quiser, eu posso tirar uma foto.
S: Si quieres, puedo tomar una foto.
E: If you want, I can take a photo.

P: Eu vou tomar uma cerveja se a genta for jantar.
S: Voy a tomar una cerveza si vamos a cenar.
E: I'm going to drink a beer if we go out to eat. (specifically, out to eat for dinner)


Check back in the future for more videos the key ways that Brazilian Portuguese differs from Spanish, including the most important vocabulary differences and false cognates!

And, as promised, here are some great resources for delving further into these differences and into Brazilian Portuguese in general.

Pois não: an excellent textbook with many cultural lessons and an audio companion
Tá falado: a podcast out of the University of Texas with pdfs of all example conversations

Pimsleur: the best strictly Portuguese language tool I have ever used; audio-based
Miscellaneous: BrazilianGringo, Wiki article on Spanish-to-Portuguese, Portuguese conjugation site

Até logo pessoal!

Speaking Spanish again after learning Portuguese from Spanish: 6 little difficulties

I have been learning Brazilian Portuguese for the last four years through my existing knowledge of Spanish. They say that these languages are 80% similar, so I say why start from the ground up. The 20% worth of differences is what will kill you though, and that's where the learning and speaking practice were of course necessary.

Last week, however, I ventured back to a country where I could employ my latent Spanish fluency once more. My wife and I, along with her brother and four other friends, traveled to the Dominican Republic for a week-long break from the Colorado cold. Switching from Portuguese back to Spanish was easier this time than the last time I had attempted it: crossing the border from Brazil to Argentina on foot last summer. That time, I could hardly speak any Spanish to the Argentine border agent because my mind was so confused. I ended up just persisting with Portuguese for several days since most people in the Argentine border town we stayed in could understand both languages. Eventually my mind flipped to Spanish but my lingual ego was definitely bruised.

Where Argentina meets Brazil high above the Rio Iguaçu. I'm the guy in the blue who doesn't know that he's about to get linguistically demolished.

This experience in Argentina allowed me to walk away with a few thoughts about the biggest problems one might encounter in switching rapidly from Brazilian Portuguese to Spanish. I put these thoughts to the test this past week in the Dominican Republic and arrived at the six biggest things I had to remember to change so that I actually spoke proper Spanish again and not "Portuñol". The six "big" things are actually quite simple tips, or language hacks I suppose you could call them. Three deal with pronunciation and three deal with little words:

In Spanish:

1) …words that have an L at the end of them are once more pronounced with an L sound as in English, not a W sound. Brazil, papel, azul.

2) …words that have a UE at the end of them are pronounced "ay" as in "lay", not with an "ee" as in "tee" sound. Que tal, porque, Que hora es? (side note: not Que horas son? as in Portuguese!)

3) …words that have an O at the end are once more pronounced with a hard O, not "oo" an in "too" as in Portuguese words when the O follows a consonant. Como, espero, tenho/tengo.

4) …the word for "there" is allá, not lá as in Portuguese! Lá is such a fun, emphatic word in Portuguese which sadly just can't happen in Spanish. I messed this one up a lot.

5) …the word for "but" is pero, not mais as in Portuguese! You would be shocked how much this cropped up, I think because it's usually said as a connecting word without even thinking about it.

6) …you must say no at the end of a questioning phase instead of the Portuguese conjunction né. Vamos cenar ahorita, no? This was another trip-up that got me accused of speaking with a heavy Brazilian twang.

And that's all you need to know! Just kidding. Of course you will find difficulties of your own that you will have to learn to overcome, but I hope that these may provide a little help or at least a little insight into the mental process you may need to undergo when switching between two very similar languages.

Até logo! I mean, hasta luego!

Venmo Eats Cash (and Google Wallet) for Breakfast

My wife and I arranged a ski trip in Colorado a few weekends ago with ourselves and 29 out-of-town friends. A month before the trip we dropped almost three grand on a VRBO chalet reservation for four nights and decided we'd ask everyone to pay us back later. Come Saturday night when all 31 of us were at the chalet and before the party really got started we calculated the per person cost and asked that everyone pay us back as soon as was convenient. Within a few hours we already had over half of the reimbursements and by Monday we were only missing two. This is a far cry from the "old days" when you had to harrass your friends until they finally got to an ATM or dropped a check in the mail. This is the final breakdown of the reimbursement methods:

Google Wallet: 1
Paypal: 2
Cash: 4
Check: 4
Venmo: 18

Venmo nearly doubled the rest of the payment methods combined, including other person-to-person money transfer sites such as Paypal and Google Wallet. Until Venmo starts charging small fees for personal transactions and bank account transfers, I can't see this trend slowing anytime soon (at least with millenials) - it's just too damn easy, convenient, and fun even.

So cash is doomed, certainly. And so are checks. (Although my mother-in-law still totes her checkbook around religiously.) But I specifically wonder about the lagging popularity of Google Wallet too: is Wallet to Venmo what Google+ is to Facebook? This hand-picked example is clearly a small sample size but based on other recent fiduciary experiences too my initial inclination is a resounding yes. I'll be excited to see the situation develop.

Side note: I'm still taking over/under bets on 2020 being the Year of the Demise of the Penny (YDP).

Top 11 Spanish-to-Portuguese Pronunciation Differences

This post serves as a companion guide to our YouTube video, Top 11 Spanish-to-Portuguese Pronunciation Differences.

For English speakers who are familiar with Spanish and want to learn Brazilian Portuguese, going through these Top 11 Tips will help you understand 90% of the pronunciation differences between the two languages. One by one we explain each difference and have Gláuber from Brazil read a list of examples. In the YouTube video you can hear Zitely from Mexico also read the Spanish translation of each word for comparison, but here I just list the Portuguese words:

1) Five new letters in Portuguese: ã, õ, ê, ô, and ç

• ã is a nasal vowel: lã
• õ is a nasal vowel: televisões
• ê is an open vowel: Por quê?
• ô is an open vowel: colônia
• ç sounds like an s: açúcar

2) Final position -e and -o

• Final -e sounds like "ee" as in "bee": telefone, nome
• Final -o sounds like "oo" as in "too": livro, como

3) Nasalized vowels ã and õ

• ã sounds like plugging your nose and saying "ahng": não, coração, irmã
• õ sounds like plugging your nose and saying "ohng": corações, lições

4) Nasalized vowels before a final -m/-n in a word/syllable

• vowel + m sounds like vowel + ng (nasal): tem, sim, som, um hotel
• vowel + n sounds like vowel + ng (nasal): quanto, convento, sinto, fonte, assunto, muito

5) g-, d-, and t- before -i or -e

• g before i or any e sounds like "zh" as in "treasure": gente, longe, gigante, giz
• d before i or final e sounds like "j" as in "judge": cidade, pode, dia, dizer
• d before non-final e sounds like "d" as in "dip": dez
• t before i or final e sounds like "ch" as in "cheat": sete, diamante, tio, tipo
• t before non-final e sounds like "t" as in "tip": tempo

6) r and rr

• r at beginning of word or beginning of post-consonant syllable sounds like "h" as in "hurt": rã, regra, honra, Israel, Rio de Janeiro
• rr always sounds like "h" as in "hurt": carro, cachorro

7) Final -l in a word/syllable always has a "w" sound

• mal, falta, legal, animal
• papel, túnel
• mil, barril, Brasil
• sol, espanhol, gol
• azul, última, multicultural

8) lh and nh

• lh sounds like the "lli" of "million": julho, mulher, trabalhar, lhe
• nh soundl like the "ni" of "onion": banho, senhor, amanhã, tenho, vinho

9) j always sounds like "zh" as in "treasure"

• já, jota, traje, laranja

10) ch always sounds like a soft "sh" as in "show"

• China, cheque, chegar, marchar

11) v always sounds like "v" as in "vote"

• vez, viajar, lavar, palavra

Check back in the future for more videos about the key ways that Brazilian Portuguese differs from Spanish, including the most important vocabulary differences and the most important grammar differences!

And here are some other great resources for English-speaking Spanish speakers who want to learn Brazilian Portuguese:

Pois não: an excellent textbook with many cultural lessons and an audio companion

Tá falado: a podcast out of the University of Texas with pdfs of all example conversations

Pimsleur: the best strictly Portuguese language tool I have ever used; audio-based