No, this isn’t about humans. It’s about my new puppy friends and my obsession with relearning Spanish. Against my better judgement, we added two puppies to our pet family. Over the years, we have had many cats and one sweet dog. My husband has been bringing the kittens home for years; firefighters have a reputation for rescuing animals, and sometimes people will leave a box of unwanted baby cats or dogs outside the fire academy or department. That is how we started getting pets, despite my housecleaning meticulousness.
I’m really more of a dog lover than a cat lover, so we eventually rescued a puppy from an Albuquerque shelter and brought her home. She’s now an elderly dog, about eleven or twelve, I think. I can’t remember what year we brought her home, but she is the best dog in the world. She looked into my soul with her puppy eyes, and that was how I knew she belonged with us.
But puppies are a lot of work. I’ve been loath to bring home any new puppy friends. Our poor older dog has had to be satisfied with cats for her animal companions. She was always a lot nicer to them than they were to her. Our most elderly cat died a couple of years ago, and our other cat is living with one of my daughters because she was peculiarly unhealthy living in Roswell. The alley cats had given her fleas, and she was allergic to them. For some reason, fleas don’t proliferate in the desert, and so we had to send her back to our desert-dwelling daughter before the poor patchy creature withered away.
To make a long story short, just having one dog and a large yard with plenty of trees for shade allowed me to give in to my kids’ pleas for puppies. A friend had rescued a pregnant dog, whom the owner didn’t want, and she needed to give up some of the puppies. We brought two home. Since then, my life has been consumed with them, as they are very young. Thankfully, unlike human babies, they can be put out in the yard when they become too trying. They move like a whirlwind through the house, you see. Anyway, it’s been fun, but if you notice, I haven’t posted on here for about as long as we’ve had these pups in our lives. I suppose I should give an explanation for the title of my post: the dogs are true friends, as dogs will always be. They will fill your heart because they will love you like only dogs can. They are true blessings from God!
As I said, I’ve also become somewhat obsessive about relearning all the Spanish I’ve lost over the years. When I graduated from college, I could read and write fluently in Spanish and speak it if forced (I’m not good at speaking in my native tongue; trust me, it’s worse in Spanish). I had to be able to read and write fluently because my degree entailed reading very long novels and writing fifteen-page papers. I still remember when I became a fluent reader; it really was to the point of one day translating slowly as I went, and the next, just reading and understanding.
I’m doing Duolingo because it was recommended to me. Duolingo does deal with grammar, but it’s also good for conversational Spanish, which is what I need. So far, it’s helpful. I also found a copy of El amor en los tiempos del cólera at a thrift store and will test my reading fluency, to see if it’s still there…somewhere. I also started a Finnish course on Duolingo, but it’s not very expansive, and I have no earthly idea why I chose to take it in the first place, except that the Minä in Minäverse is Finnish for “I” — it was meant to denote a narcissistic world. Not the Finnish part — I chose Finnish because it has a pleasant sound and the umlaut looks nice.
My days, then, are full of puppies whom I run after while shouting Spanish phrases at my phone. I don’t yet shout in Finnish, though a friend on Discord posted a video of strong Finnish swear words. Very serious shouting words, those. But that’s a digression. Re Spanish, I decided I needed more than Duolingo, which brought me to the website Real Fast Spanish, where I read a post that piqued my interest, on false English-Spanish cognates. He calls these “false friends,” which is apropos. True cognates make your life easier and they are, consequently, your friends. False ones can lead to embarrassment or confusion.
Obviously, there are many false cognates, and his article doesn’t deal with them all. I found his article fascinating because the words he groups together all have to do with emotions. He gives some theories as to why there are so many false cognates in the world of emotions. I believe it has to do with the intangibility of emotions, as well as the way different cultures approach them. If you are interested in learning Spanish, you should read his handy table. There is one word where the false cognate goes one direction, Spanish to English, and that is gracioso. Gracioso does not mean gracious, as one would expect. It means funny. But the word for gracious is cortés, which has a true English cognate, courteous. Gracious is simply an extension of related to manners of the court.
In between work and caring for puppies, I’ve managed to find a subject that makes me emocionada about life again. Words. Words in Spanish, Finnish, and English. Yes, emocionada is on the list of false cognates. Go see for yourself.
To bring this back around and force two subjects to fit together that don’t at all, the reason I prefer dogs over cats is that they are true friends, while cats are false friends. Is that a cruel thing to say? Cruel, perhaps, but true. Cats will eat your face off after you die; dogs will curl up by your side and get depressed because they want you to run with them again. Dogs really love their humans, and cats are capable of the same love, I suppose, but they will only show it when it suits them. Cats are the false cognates of the animal world. Okay, I admit that was a real stretch. My apologies. I haven’t been sleeping much. Puppies, you know.
Jill Domschot 