English is not my first language. I grew up in central Minnesota. Minnesotan, (pronounced Minasood'n) is my mother tongue. My mother tells me that I didn't speak at all until I was almost 3 years old. She quickly added that was probably because things were going pretty good, so I didn't need to talk. Going to school I came in contact with other cultures. Immigrants who came from such far away places as Iowa, Illinois, even New York. I eventually learned to speak, understand, read and write American English "pretty good.", but I sometimes revert to my Minnesotan to express important concepts. (See also "
Norwegian and Minnesotan")
One of these concepts is the phrase "pretty good". I'm pretty good at math. That doesn't mean I don't make occasional mistakes, or that I know anything about trigonometry or calculus, but I can do simple calculations in my head, and know that a section of land is 640 acres, 1 mile on each side, and 10 acres is 660 feet on each side. There's a lot of math I can't do, but for a Minnesotan, I'm "pretty good."
When I brought home my straight A report card from the first grade, my mother smiled and said "That's pretty good, David." I knew I had received high praise. On rare occasions my father said "pretty darn good"
That being said, when I say I speak pretty good Spanish, it means I can converse on general topics and understand most of what I hear. You might lose me in a conversation on macro-economics, quantum physics or a host of other topics which don't interest me, but you might also lose me on those topics in English or Minnesotan,
So when I say I have become pretty good at a language, or that I have a goal of becoming pretty good, you'll know what I mean.
