Your grandmother has WHAT?!?

I am currently taking a MW Elementary Spanish class, and we recently presented members of our families in front of the class.  Our class is an equal mix of people who took Spanish previously, or those that are choosing to learn it now for some reason – such as myself.  At first, I couldn’t comprehend why anyone who had already taken Spanish would take a beginning course in College when they have to pay for the opportunity to repeat content.  Then again, a girl in my class admitted to wanting an easy grade to maintain her Financial Aid.  Nonetheless, if pronunciation and speech is any measure of previous language education, upon watching countless presentations I realized EXACTLY why people are taking this class.

“Mi abuela tiene ochenta y dos anos.”  Ahh-nos. Not ahh-nn-yos.  One after the other would get up, stating that their family member had [insert number here] anos.  If you haven’t taken Spanish before, early in the class the teacher makes the distinction between anos (ahh-nos) vs. años (ahh-nn-yos).  The professor states that anos is the word for anus, while años is the word for years.

This was a simple mistake on the part of my classmates, but it caused me to struggle for almost two hours to stifle my laughter.  The more people that pronounced it incorrectly, the more difficult it became for me to maintain composure.  Grandmothers, mothers, fathers, cousins, sisters – they all apparently had dozens of anuses.  How awkward.

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