My Spanish, you would like to think has made it to fluent status after 3 months? Nope you’d be wrong. Its still terrible. It should be easy. They pronounce every letter in a word (unlike English) although ‘e’ sounds like a and ‘g’ and ‘j’ have to be spat forcefully, then there’s ‘ll’ like the y in ya, ya ya das iz gud.
I have been having classes organised by a Colombian friend of mine which are great but how many tenses does one language need? For goodness sakes. Not only that but how many varieties of language does one country need. I went to the Thyssen the other day to see Espanol, Galego, Catalan and Euskera as the choices for Spanish Nationals. Can you imagine going to the National Gallery and having pamphlets in Welsh, Cornish and Jordi or Brum? Perhaps the Welsh need to get on the bandwagon of pamphlets where their language is concerned? You know make it official an all!
I have Michael Thomas the inevitable voice of reason and pronunciation on my iPOD and my Spanish friends who I asked to teach me some useful phrases. They taught me some phrases, how useful they will be in daily life I don’t know:
‘he’s as mad as a goat’
‘hot cocks’
‘kinki’
‘you look as though you have the three legs of a cat’
‘when you are like a bear you are more beautiful’
‘the problem is he is like a screw’
‘you know he’s like a clothes peg or perhaps a pair of tweezers?’ Not sure.
and my favourite
‘your about as useful as the Pope’s cock’
Which I would like to express to some of the delightful, attentive and cheerful waiters here on occasions.
So my language attempts persist. If you would like me to say that any individual is crazy or useless I’m your lady! Otherwise forget it! I don’t think that there is anything quite like the comfort of your own language.
