Hablo un poco de espanol

I fancy myself a bit of a linguist. I am at least a lover of languages and appreciate some of the ins and outs of Latin-based grammar. I speak French and some German.  I speak a little bit of Spanish. A little, yes, really, it is about at that level. The traditional and tentative hablo poco espanol….

So with this trip to Spain on my dance card, I had better brush this poco espanol up a bit. On the cell phone, I have signed up with Mango languages for Castilian Spanish. Now, I can say things like: ‘he’s cute, can you introduce me?’, and ‘what are you studying at university?’ and ‘do you like going to the beach?’.  I do have a bit of a demographic problem here, but all those verbs are useful and now we are into birthday parties and fiestas in general.

My other language course is with Duolingo and that all takes place on my desk-top computer. But here I gave given myself a twist, I am doing it from French. Much of the construction and vocabulary is related in the two languages. Spanish, can be very economical on words. So in French, if I don’t like eating fish I can say: ‘Je ne mange pas de poisson. ‘In Spanish it can be a snappy ‘no come pescado.’ But then Spanish comes along and throws in lo and me and se at rather surprising places just when I think I have got it all sorted out.

This is all an act of great hope and endeavour on my part, as when I try and converse in Spain, the locals talk at 100km an hour and I am left with my mouth open and my ears all buzzed up, like a pescado out of water gasping for breath and words.