{"id":920,"date":"2011-09-10T18:39:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-10T23:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fearofwhales\/2011\/09\/bastante-2.html"},"modified":"2012-06-22T07:50:59","modified_gmt":"2012-06-22T12:50:59","slug":"bastante-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2011\/09\/bastante-2.html","title":{"rendered":"Bastante"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the most useful words I ever learned does not exist in English.<\/p>\n

I learned in in Spanish class, where I was taught it meant \u201cenough\u201d but also could be used similar to the way we use \u201ckinda\u201d.<\/p>\n

Like most things I learned in high school Spanish class it was promptly forgotten, but my memory was rekindled when I took a mission trip to Mexico, and found that it was incredibly handy for a missionary.<\/p>\n

To someone who doesn\u2019t know the language with any level of fluency, everything between \u201cS\u00ed\u201d and \u201cNo\u201d is \u201cbastante\u201d. And to someone whos eyes are being opened for the first time in a dusty impoverished border town, just about everything lies somewhere between \u201cS\u00ed\u201d and \u201cNo\u201d<\/p>\n

Did you sleep well? \u201cBastante\u201d
Is the water safe to drink? \u201cBastante\u201d
Do you speak any Spanish? \u201cBastante\u201d
Are we going to finish on time? \u201cBastante\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CasaDebaja\"<\/a>It got to the point that \u201cbastante\u201d became the motto for work in Mexico. It took on a life that goes beyond it\u2019s literal meaning in Spanish grammar. We were a crew of teenagers who had no idea what we were doing, didn\u2019t speak the language, and would be gone in a week. We couldn’t pretend like the house we were going to build would be great, or that out outreach to the community would \u201cwork\u201d. But we could make sure it was bastante. That it was \u201cgood enough\u201d that is was \u201csufficient\u201d<\/p>\n

Bastante doesn\u2019t mean you do the bare minimum, the way the English word \u201cenough\u201d implies. Bastante means you get it done, and you do a good job considering. You can\u2019t go and visit a family of four living in a shack made of tarp and pallet racking and call anything \u201cgood\u201d at the end of the day. neither can you say the problem is \u201csolved\u201d or the job is \u201cdone\u201d. What you can do is dig a trench so that when it rains the water goes around and doesn\u2019t run through the house and make the baby sick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the most useful words I ever learned does not exist in English. I learned in in Spanish class, where I was taught it meant \u201cenough\u201d but also could be used similar to the way we use \u201ckinda\u201d. Like most things I learned in high school Spanish class it was promptly forgotten, but my…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nBastante - A Fear of Whales<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2011\/09\/bastante-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bastante - A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of the most useful words I ever learned does not exist in English. I learned in in Spanish class, where I was taught it meant \u201cenough\u201d but also could be used similar to the way we use \u201ckinda\u201d. 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