Sharing Session 1: Language & Culture

Being in a country where English is not the first language is hard. Learning to speak the language from level zero is harder. And now, now I have to know the formality and the informality of the language usage when speaking.

Of course, before coming to Spain, I have learnt a few important greetings like Buenos Diaz, Hola, Adios... I have also learnt two ways of saying ´how are you?´ in Spanish which are ´¿Que tal?´and ´¿Como estas?´. One of them is formal and the other is informal. All this while, I have the mentality thinking that ´¿Como estas?´ is formal while ´¿Que tal?´is informal. Naturally, for someone who doesn´t know Spanish at all, ´¿Que tal?´obviously sounded less formal where as ´¿Como estas?´sounded more polite.

However after knowing more about the conjugations of verbs I realise that ´estas´ is a conjugation for Tu (informal you) and I started having doubts but somehow, my brain says... "no, no, no... stick to what you "know"!!!...." so I did, continuing to assume that ´¿Como estas?´is formal.

And so one day we had a meeting with the engineer of a town council. Of course it´s the first time meeting him and definitely much older than me. I´m only 22 so duhh...

Like the usual greetings, we shook hands and for the first time I tried to use a better greeting besides ´Hola´. I said "¿Como estas?".

Well, the the engineer didn´t reply and he didn´t smile either... and my supervisor looked at me for a while. At that time, it didn´t occur to me that I said something wrong. All I thought was "Wow... he´s so cold."

A few days later, I listened to a podcast about basic Spanish. In the podcast, it says ¿Que tal? (formal)... ¿Como estas? (informal) and they repeated the same thing several times. Then, I recalled my greeting with the town council engineer. No wonder he didn´t smile or reply... HAHA.. What I did was like saying "Wassup dude?" to a person whom I have never met and whom is much older and more experienced than me. Oh my...that is just embarrassing...

Lesson learnt... Que tal is formal!!!

And never simply assume stuff... Nowadays it's even wrong to assume the gender by looks ;) ... what to say language...