I am a lecturer (on Mexico, Latin America, Anthropology, History) at the University of Michigan and a free-lance translator (Spanish to English). In case anyone cares, I learned Spanish during a year-long trip to Spain in 1980-81, then relearned it during three years in Mexico in 1982-85, then continued to pick up new nuances, variations, and accents from my cubano in-laws plus about half a dozen research trips to the island over the past 23 years. In an earlier life, I studied Russian for eight years (high school, college), including a six-week trip to Moscow/Leningrad during the grim Brezhnev era, though I've mainly forgotten how to speak it from lack of practice. However, I am occasionally surprised to find that I can still understood quite a bit when I hear or see some Russian. I learned the basics of Portuguese by sitting in on a "Portuguese for Spanish Speakers" class at UM in 2004, plus by listening to lots of Jobim, Cayetano, and Maria Bethania. I learned rudimentary Runasimi by sitting in on the Quechua class at UM and by running the UM Quechua program and talking with the visiting lecturers from Cusco over the past several years; that was a few years ago, though, and the knowledge is fading. Language: use it or lose it! How I got into Wiki: As I do my translations, I have to look up lots of stuff on the internet (thank goodness it exists!), which is what got me into Wikipedia. I've done lots of research over the years in Latin American history and culture, so I feel qualified to make additions and emendations in articles on those topics whenever I see something that looks like it could use a little tweaking. My name: I lived in a town named Mexquitic, in the state of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, for about three years back in the 1980s, and I always loved the name potosino for people from my favorite state. I hope my "fellow" potosinos don't mind that I took the name first! |
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