My opening mantra whenever we enter a Spanish shop, store, restaurant or bar is ‘Soy Inglés. Hablo un poco de español.’
A simple statement that explains that I am English and can speak a little Spanish, with ‘little’ being the operative word. We do know quite a few individual Spanish words but it’s the putting them all together so they make sense that is troublesome.
This simple statement gives the member of staff four options. Gleefully embrace the opportunity to practice their own English, try to enhance our knowledge by speaking to us in Spanish, look around in complete panic for a colleague who has a modicum of English or reach for their phone and Google ‘Spanish to English translation’ as quickly as possible.
If they try the second option it soon becomes obvious how limited our knowledge is and they revert to one of the other three.
We have experienced all of these. A very helpful shop assistant who had an impressive ability to speak English but couldn’t understand it when we spoke back to her in English OR our pigeon Spanish. Then there was the assistant in a bed shop who phoned her boss in order that he could translate the conversation and an interior design shop assistant that we conversed with for more than 30mins via Google translate.
Deb and I, well mainly Deb in all honesty, thrive on the challenge of attempting to converse in Spanish, even with our limited knowledge. But the younger Spanish people we have come across seem very keen to communicate in English. As one young shop assistant explained, ‘It is important we learn English, it will give us more prospects.’ I fully understand, but this is a two-way learning street.
I remember one particular visit to our favourite supermarket recently where we were going through the checkout and the assistant was talking to me in English such as ‘How many bags do you need?’ ‘Do you have a Consum loyalty card?’ and ‘That will be 76 Euros and 15 cents please.’ There was a lot of wine in that particular shopping trip.
I was replying in Spanish and trying to put into practice my lessons, ‘Tres bolsas por favor.’ ‘Si.’ and ‘ Setenta y seis euros y quince centavos.’ I said as I handed over the money. It was a surreal situation but she wanted to practice as much as I did.
It is important to us though that we learn Spanish and are able to converse at some level in the native language of our adopted country. That only seems right and respectful.
But also a lack of Spanish means we potentially miss out on many of the cultural aspects of life in the country and have less of an opportunity to integrate within the local community, and we want the ability to integrate as this is our future home.
With these thoughts in mind we had commenced our Spanish lessons at the start of this year, but do I want to pass an ‘A’ level in Spanish or just be able to get by on a day to day basis with a conversational knowledge? Well, I have no intention of sitting another exam at my age and ultimately, with my almost 60 year old brain, it is quite difficult to absorb and retain new information. Especially past, present and future Spanish verb conjugations. Ser and Estar? My brain felt like porridge following that lesson.
As it happened, making that decision was irrelevant as we had to postpone our Spanish lessons simply because of the amount of times we have been, and are going, to our Spanish home this year. I just didn’t have enough time to catch up on the backlog of work my holidays were generating, let alone concentrate on learning another language.
We have both kept up with Duolingo though, a really useful App that enables you to learn your language of choice at your leisure.
We will get there eventually, assisted a lot by our frequent visits to our new Spanish home. During the process we hope to help our new Spanish neighbours as much with their English as they do with our Spanish.
Give it 12 months and I’ll be writing this blog in Spanish.
Moving to Spain? Help! 