Since we´ve been here I´ve had plenty of opportunities to improve my Spanish. However, despite much encouragement from my good self, Matt has yet to fully grasp the bull by the horns and learn the language properly. He´s fairly hopeless at verbs but does pick up vocabulary very quickly - and remember it.
This lack of knowledge of the way Spanish works has, on occasion, been the cause of much amusement to me. The most recent of the incidents happened in a coffee bar last week. While supping on his Columbian coffee Matt noticed a sign saying tómate un capricho, which translates as ´have a treat´ (from the verb tomar - have or take). For the life of him, Matt could not understand why a coffee bar would be talking about tomatoes, and I had to have a giggle before I explained.
Even better, was one of the first conversations he had with our neighbour, José María, from whom we buy our eggs (a cultural note - this name translates as Joseph Mary and is a common man´s name in Spain. The women´s version is Mary Joseph - María José). In an attempt to make him practice his Spanish I always make Matt go to buy eggs on his own and he normally comes back half an hour later with two dozen big, fresh eggs and tales of what he´s just been talking about and how he expressed himself. On the occasion in question, Matt was at the bottom of our finca, our piece of land, and called across to José María to ask him if he had some eggs we could buy. Very pleased with being able to ask the question, Matt shouted out, so all the neigbours could hear "¿tienes huevos?" . Now, while this can indeed be translated as ´Do you have eggs?´ huevos is also a very common slang word meaning balls (of the masculine variety, not for playing tennis). So in fact, what Matt had asked was ´Do you have balls?´, which here is a way of asking a man for a fight. Fortunately our neighbour is well aware of Matt´s Spanish (in)capabilities and answered Sí, dos - ´Yes, two´, which Matt understood as meaning ´yes I have two (dozen eggs)´. he came back to house, chest bursting with pride, as he told me about his latest linguistic adventure and was most put out when I burst out laughing.
The best Spanish faux pas however, was committed by Matt´s mum on a visit to us here. She would very often walk down the hill into the town and back and one day came home with stories of how she had practised her Spanish, which she has only been picking up in bits and pieces since she´s been visting us here. This day, she recounted, she´d been on her way down the hill and walked past an elder gentleman on his way up, whom she greeted with a "good day". When questioned as to what she´d actually said, it turned out that it was "¡hola, bueno!". She´d confused the word buenas, which can be used as a shortened version of buenos días or buenas tardes, and in fact said "hi handsome!". The best part of it was that he´d responded with a "¡hola, buena!" or "hello gorgeous".
I have four English-speaking friends arriving today. I wonder if any of them will provide me with my next linguistic chuckle?
