Fence, fence, fence, fence

I don't often write about perhaps the aspect of my life which is most different here in Costa Rica than back home. Language. There may be some other aspects that could be more different, now that I think about it, but using a different language probably the winner. Of course, all my time spent with my Kindle or laptop is mostly done in English, so I'm certainly not in any sort of full immersion environment. I think the only way to do that in this day and age would be to throw away one's phone, laptop, and any books in one's native tongue. Yet, by living with a host family, a huge amount of my daily experience is in Spanish. This, of course, is one of the big parts of the Peace Corps. Unlike (I assume) volunteers serving in countries like Cameroon or Cambodia, I came to Costa Rica having studied Spanish for four years in high school and four years in college and having lived in Spain for a semester. Thus, my experience has been two fold: 1) learning all the Costa Rican twists on Spanish and 2) learning very specific vocabulary. Both of these learning experiences have been greatly enhanced by my new host family. 

The main reason is that my host mom and host brother are very willing to answer any and all of my questions. Additionally, my host brother speaks knows a lot of English, and spends a lot of time online-where he often encounters words and phrases he asks me about. So, we often have exchanges about language where, in the act of teaching, I tend to learn things about Spanish as well. Lastly, I've told them and my host dad to feel free to correct me any time I make a mistake--which is one of the most important things about learning a language. Sadly, I have recently noticed that I've adopted the second of the two characteristics of Costa Rican Spanish I detest most. The first trait, using Usted instead of tú as the second person singular pronoun, I had to adopt the first week to be polite. The second, adding a diminutive suffix for no real reason at all, I'm ashamed to say I've noticed myself doing a lot recently. But this is the inevitable consequence of spending so much time chatting with native speakers and watching Costa Rican television. 

(the source of my error)

On to the title of the post, which indicates an interesting discussion/learning experience I had the other day. An important maxim in language learning is that you can't translate everything. I hold fast by this statement-and think all language learners should. This discussion the other day was about me being a bit cavalier with my used of the word 'fence.' Like a fence around a yard, not the sport. Fences, gates, bars on windows-these are a big part of Costa Rican (and Central American) culture, a fancy sport with swords-not so much. Having learned the word 'cerca' for fence, I, until recently, had used that for all fences. But, my host brother had corrected me once or twice, as I referred to the fence in front of our property as a 'cerca' that it was actually a 'tapia' because it has a cement wall as a base (it has wrought iron fencing on top of it). I casually ignored his instruction, thinking, a fence is a fence, no big deal. So, I once again committed the error, and he decided I needed to learn. He brought up some images on Google Images, and taught me. So, I've learned: 'cerca' is used for fences made of wood-like your traditional picket fence, 'tapia' for fences made of concrete or cinder blocks (some of them we might call walls in English-which can be done in Spanish too 'muro'), 'malla' is used for chain link fences, and 'verja' is used for wrought iron fences (as well as bars on windows). So, how do you say 'fence' in Costa Rica: refer to the previous sentence. It's quite a specific example, but, it's things like this-that in Spanish instead of adding a word to 'fence' to describe it, they have different words-that I find fascinating about languages and learning languages. And, it's this type of thing that doesn't get covered in Spanish classes; literary analysis: check, being able to point to a fence in Costa Rica and not look stupid: fail. Remember: cerca: fence, malla: fence, tapia: fence, verja: fence.