daily spanish lesson

Learning a second language is interesting to say the least. I´ve been learning Spanish for an embarrassingly long amount of time, and I still find myself going through new phases within the process. Lately, my mind can´t help but translate things into English--which is surprising because this is normally a beginner´s weakness. Back in the early days, I often translated things word for word in a pathetic attempt to understand their meanings. For example, I would hear a sentence such as "¿Como te va?" and think "How at you it goes?" What goes? And where? What´s going on? Will you repeat?

This method clearly doesn´t work. But that doesn´t mean I can´t have fun with it. These days what´s really been interesting to me are the different ways we express ourselves in English and Spanish. In my professor´s english class last week (I teach five professors at my school beginner´s English every Wednesday, and it´s FUNNY) they could not get enough of English telephone greetings. It was beyond ridiculous to them that we present ourselves in the third person: "Hi--this is Renee". Here, the Spaniards say "Soy Renee", or "I am Renee". I can´t decide which is the more logical, but the more I think about it, I believe that they are both quite silly (and that there is no getting around it).

What I´ve really begun to realize, actually, is that the Spanish in Spain is sort of like the English in England: a bit antiquated. Verbs like "bañarse" and "alimentar" are commonplace--which, if translated literally into English--would either sound hoddy-toddy or technical: bathe oneself (in the ocean) and aliment.

¿Te bañaste? ... Did you bathe yourself (in the ocean)?
Hay que alimentarse bien. ... It is necessary to aliment oneself well.

Then there is the word "chaval". I had hated this word since I arrived in Spain, with no particular reason (although I once deduced that it might have something to do with it´s pronunciation: cha-VAL). I would hear it in sentences like "Es lo que dicen todos los chavales jovenes¨ and "Que fuerte, chaval!" Taking it for slang (something like "dude") I never bothered to look up it´s meaning, and blacklisted it from my vocabulary bank.

Until last week, when I was so lucky to stumble upon it in the dictionary, and found that it means "lass". Haha! Old and young alike are constantly throwing this word out left and right..which means Spaniards are calling each other "lasses" on a daily basis. Is this funny to anyone else?

Translations of examples above (the correct, not literal, ones):
"Es lo que dicen todos los chavales jovenes"..."It´s what all the young lasses say."
"Que fuerte, chaval!"..."That´s crazy, lass!"