Episode 11: Minding my language

This blog has several naughty words in it. If you're of a nervous disposition, please switch off and do something a little less exciting instead. Why not repot those plants you've been meaning to do for several months, or perhaps try having a shower. There's a reason you've not had sex since 1983 and everyone knows it but you!


Still here? Good, then on with the show.............Having lived with a Spaniard for 20 of my 47 years (not the same Spaniard I hasten to add for those of you attempting to count the years the lovely José and I have been together), I certainly don't take language for granted. For nearly half my lifetime, I've struggled to make myself understood by those dearest to me and I have to tell you, I'm bloody knackered!! It's hard work, all this having to listen closely to what other people say. So now I'm living in Spain and regular readers of this little online almanac will know that I'm learning the language. I will soon be fluent in Spinach. 

My mother-in-law likes to ask me each and every day what I've learned in college and takes great pride in hearing all the verbs I conjugated and the diphthongs I strangled. She then talks to me in the local dialect (Gallego). When I look at her quizzically, she does her best 'I don't understand this strange lumpy English person' look before saying to José, "you see, he still doesn't understand me". He has to explain that I'm learning Castillian Spanish, which is effectively the same language equivalent as BBC English. She then talks to me in Castillian to which my response is usually "despacio por favor" (slowly please) as she spits it out like machine gun fire. One more quizzical look to José, which conveys the 'why couldn't you have found yourself a nice Spanish boy that understands me' emotion and then she repeats it to me s-l-o-w-l-y, like I'm in the backwards class at school. There's no guarantee I'll understand even that, but when I do, she smiles at me and then gets on with what she's doing. Presumably rinsing out her girdles is far more exciting than talking to her son-in-law, but bless her, she is 82 years old. Poor love needs a rest; she's got better things to do than teach me the rudiments of Spanish. There's a pile of ironing that won't do itself for a start!

Because I couldn't find a
picture of octopus testicles

The Spanish do like to rattle their sentences off at a great rate of knots and for those of us learning the language, it's no picnic. I sometimes watch the news with the subtitles on to see how many words I can pick out. I'm getting a little better; the other night I managed to do half of the main news item about the general election, but that was only because the newsreader was using words like votar (to vote) and elección (!!). Normally, I've only just managed to translate "Good evening and here is the news in a foreign language" when the weather forecast comes on. The trouble with rattling words off so quickly is that everything sounds like that Pepsi advert in the 1970´s. You remember the one........ lipsmackin'thirstquenching'acetastin'motivatin'goodbuzzin'cooltalkin'highwalkin'fastlivin'evergivin'coolfizzin'PEPSIIIIIIIIII!! Well that's what I have to deal with on a daily basis. To me, it sounds like the equivalent of that noise people make to newborn babies - the one where they stick out both lips and run their finger up and down whilst going blurblurblurblurblurblurblur. So sure was I that this is what the language sounded like, I tried that out once in our local supermarket and ended up ordering a box of tampons and two octopus testicles.

Apparently, when translated into Spanish, it means "excuse me, can you tell me where I can buy some Pepsi"

The other problem with language is that it can get you into all sorts of trouble. I went into a shop a couple of years ago where the assistant was talking to me about some shoes I was buying. Instead of saying that I really liked them, I told him I loved him a lot. He still writes at Christmas, although he's moved on from Harrods and now runs a little tea-room in Ashton-Under-Lyme.

NOT the one I had
in the freezer!

Here in Spain, there are so many words in Spanish that if said wrong, can get you into hot water. The one I first learned about several years ago has been the one that has haunted me ever since. I still can't say the word without first checking myself to make sure that the correct vowel will come out. I was asked by my ex-mother-in-law if I would like chicken for dinner that night. Trying out my newly gained Spanish (I was going to night school at the time) and with every intention of impressing her, I replied "Sí, me gusta mucho. Tengo un polla enormé en el congelador". Those of you that speak Spanish will be laughing yourselves stupid now. What I meant to say was "Yes, I love chicken. I have a huge chicken in the freezer", but I actually told her I had a huge cock in the freezer.
Pollo = chicken
Polla = cock
Still it did the trick. I think she was certainly impressed!!!


There´s more!


One of my favourite words in Spanish is the word for cough........"tos". I quite like having a cough here so that I can ask everyone to excuse my tossing. Childish maybe. Wearing?? Never!


José recounts the tale of an ex-student of his who came to England on holiday and caught a stinking cold. The Spanish for being totally bunged up nasally is "constipado", so when his host asked him how he was feeling, he just translated it into English and told her he was constipated. She bought him some 'opening medicine' as it's known in the nursing profession and he spent the next few days being unbunged, but from the wrong end. It cured his blocked nose though, he was too scared to sneeze for about 5 days!

Flauber's father, apparently!!

While we're talking about students, I need to mention something that happened in class the other day. It's more to do with not hearing something correctly, but it still makes me laugh. I sit with two lovely ladies, Sanna (Scottish) and Belinda (Australian). We have a Brazilian guy in the class called Flauber (pronounced like flower but with a 'b' instead of a 'w'). We were talking about our families and had to go round the class telling the others the names of family members and introducing them. When it got to Flauber, he told us his father's name was Clauber. Flauber and Clauber! Well, Sanna and I could see the funny side of this and started to giggle like little schoolkids. Belinda hadn't completely heard and whispered in her fab Australian accent, "What did he say? Cowbell???" By this time, Sanna and I were wiping tears from our eyes while Belinda looked on in blissful ignorance, which made us laugh even more. How we didn't get thrown out that day is still a mystery to me.


Incidentally, I have the auto-translator on when I look at Spanish websites and there are some chairs in IKEA called Sarna, which translates as Scabies in English. Nice!


One other time in the class, we had to translate "un par de veces al año". I didn't know at the time how to put the ñ into my iPhone, so I wrote "un par de veces al ano" and asked my auto-translator what that meant. It´s "a pair of times to the anus" if you want to know. Jeez, nothing gets easier in this country. Thank goodness the wine is so damn cheap!


And so onto the grand finale of embarrassing mistakes what I have made here in Spain. One of my issues  here is that I try to speak in Spanish where I can but people hear an English accent and reply to me in English, trying hard to test out their language skills. This spreads to the most unlikely of sources when, last weekend we went to a garden store in the local town. In a large cage was a parrot, so I took the opportunity to say "Hola" to it. I repeated me hello's several times in an attempt to coax this bird to reply to me. My patience was rewarded when it said in a loud voice......"Hello". Can you believe that? Not even the bloody parrot will answer me in Spanish!

Wanker!

So, the day after, we were having Sunday lunch and were listening to the bird in the flat opposite that was chirping rather vociferously. José told his parents about the parrot the day before and they went on to recount the story of another bird in Argentina they'd once looked after for a friend. Bird in Spanish is 'pajaro'. Unfortunately, I have another word in my head. One of my bestest friends has a Pajero 4 x 4 in the UK and I have that word in my head, so I proudly told my in-laws, "mis abuelos tenían un pajero", which means, "my grandparents had a wanker". Straight up! My grandparents had a wanker! I thought I was going to have to do the Heimlich manoeuvre on my father-in-law who was laughing so much, I think he ruptured something. The thing is, When Gail bought her car, José laughed, but none of us knew why. He told us the translation of Pajero and ever since, the joke has been that Gail was coming to pick us up in the wanker. It was so automatic to use that word at the dinner table that I never gave it another thought. It now ranks as highly as the pollo/polla issue and is something I am petrified of repeating. I can never go to the neighbours and comment on their bird now for fear of being beaten forcibly.


What I don't get is why the mistakes in this country are all dirty/rude words, where the mistakes in English are nowhere near as bad. As an example, Spaniards get kitchen and chicken mixed up. Well I'd rather be laughed at for saying I had an enormous kitchen in my freezer; it's nowhere near as embarrassing. 


I'm sure that there are lots more scatalogical mistakes to be made with my language skills and you can be sure that you lovely people out there in the dark will be the first to hear them. In the meanwhile, mine's a gin and tonic served with a very large slice of memory loss!


Incidentally, although I've lived with a person of Spanish origin for over 20 years, José takes great delight in telling everyone that he has lasted longer than the other one, coming in at 10 years and 6 months......as well as the fact that our union is 'legal'. And why shouldn't he. Knowing what he does about my grandparents makes me just that little bit more special.