Ha! All that Latin is good for something! I freaked one of the smart ass kids out when they were looking up "inquest" in the dictionary and he said "I bet you don't know where that comes from" and I rattled off "Inquire. Latin for "to ask""

It was worth EVERY PENNY just to be able to do that, I tell ya.

Soy un professora listo espantoso. ¡Yo me río de usted!

So if I'm talking to students plural, instead of "se lo..." I say...?

This caused me much trauma when I started taking French in college, because the foreign-language-learning part of my brain didn't want to change gears into pronoun-using.

HA! Flip this and you have my response to spanish. I keep thinking, "WHA? I have to pay attention to endings. Where are the pronouns."

Also, I'm prolly wrong but if you are using usted, you should say usted since the verb endings are the same for 3rd person singular.

You'll sound fairly stupid, but on the other hand, they'll know you're trying.

I remember hearing from a friend of mine who spent some time living with a host family in Germany that she ruffled a lot of feathers in the town she was staying in, because the German she'd learned at home was only using the familiar-you and she didn't know to switch to the formal-you with adults of her parents' age not related to her.

See, I liked Latin because I never ran into native Latin speakers who would confuse me. It was all nice dead people who never talked too fast or used modern street vernacular.

Erin "sé que lo dijieron"

Dee-HHAIR-on?

Que?

I have teacher spanish for parent teacher conferences:

Your kid is failing.
He doesn't do his homework.
She needs to read more.
He's doing well.
She's the smartest person in the class.
He doesn't get along with others.
She's the root of all evil.

You know. The usual stuff.

es la raiz de todo mal?

Coolness! I'm so using that.

Dear Kat--

I didn't get back online Monday so I never saw your question until today, just now. Oops.

signed, your busy friend Burrell

PS--am now running home soon, so best to call me, not post