234 CultureShock! Bolivia
Descriptive adjectives follow nouns instead of preceding
them (lección difícil instead of ‘diffi cult lesson’)
Adjectives agree in gender (male/female) and number
(singular/plural) with nouns. Example: casa blanca (white
house) is female, edifi cio blanco (white building) is male,
and casas blancas (white houses) is feminine plural. An
a fi nal letter usually indicates the word is feminine; an o
ending is masculine.
There are two significant differences in perception
between Spanish and English. First, Spanish has two verbs
for ‘to be’: ser and estar. Ser comes from essence and relates
to characteristics or identity; estar refers to state or condition.
‘To be or not to be,’ from Hamlet, would be Ser o no ser, since
it concerns the character’s identity.
Spanish also has two past tenses: the preterit, which
looks at an event as completed or factual, and the imperfect,
which describes or re-experiences an ongoing past. The most
frequent form of expressing the future is virtually identical
to the English ‘going’ plus infi nitive.
Spanish has other grammatical differences, but none are
crucial to basic communication. These basics, plus a working
vocabulary of a few hundred words, can be mastered in a
short but intense continuing education course, which you
should take before doing business in Bolivia.Aymara and Quechua
Quechua is the fourth most spoken language in the Américas
while Aymara is the sixth. Bolivian Spanish is heavily spiced
with words and phrases from both Aymara and Quechua,
both fascinating languages in their imagery, conceptual
nuances, built-in world views and sense of humour. Aymara
prevails in La Paz and the Lake Titicaca region while Quechua
is more common in Cochabamba, Sucre and Potosí. Spanish-
speaking Bolivians fancy seasoning their speech with words
and expressions from both Quechua and Aymara.
Code switching is nurtured when the indigenous culture
has food, clothing, concepts and customs nonexistent in
the conquering culture. The conqueror thus adopts the
indigenous vocabulary. Indigenous words also replace Spanish