New words and more staying at home

One of the reasons our water heater stopped working was that water was coming down the chimney and soaking the electrics and electronics. We've had lots of torrential rain recently and, the other evening, at around half past midnight the chimney began to drip again. I shimmied up onto the roof and covered the chimney with a plastic bag. The chimney has a hat like cover but it doesn't seem able to keep out the rain when it comes down in bucket-loads. The next morning I was back on the roof to cobble together a wider brimmed hat. I described the repair as Heath Robinson to someone on Twitter. For those of you who don't know William Heath Robinson (1872 – 1944) was an English cartoonist, illustrator and artist, best known for drawings of whimsically elaborate machines to achieve simple objectives.

Heath Robinson is a part of my linguistic armoury just like crikey, whoops a daisy and wide boy. Old fashioned words. I've been away from the UK for a while now and Spain is a country where there is a tendency to call a spade a spade. Nobody here seems to wince at calling someone with one arm a manco or someone with one eye tuerto and the immigration office is called that - well it's called extranjería actually but the point is good. Being out of the UK means that words get to me long after they have become common street currency. When I first heard Brexit I thought it was a stupid term. A smokescreen of a word. Social distancing and self isolation strike me as just as ponderous. When I lived in the UK though I was happy enough to accept linguistic changes of the same style without a murmur. In fact, in general I have no problems with the newer forms of English. Most of them are simply US usage and they reflect the importance of the USA as the powerhouse of the English language. I still notice two times instead of twice, more noisy instead of noisier and forms like "I'll get a beer" and "I'm good, thanks" but they don't particularly jar. Often I think the new forms are well conceived. A Briton was complaining to me about the noun, a big ask. I quite like it myself. Descriptive, easy to use and I'm not aware of any simpler alternative. The older forms are still available anyway. They may give me coffee in a cardboard cup with a lid but nobody has ever tried to force me to drink through the little hole so far.

It's odd though because with being home so much recently I've seen quite a lot of "box sets" on "streaming platforms" and I find that I often don't understand what is being said even though they are speaking English. I still have problems understanding Spanish as well and sometimes the two languages bump into each other so that I find that I can't think of the English for the Spanish word, which I understand,  just as I often don't know the Spanish for an English word.

Listening to this afternoon's speech by our President, Pedro Sanchez, on the tele caused me almost no problems at all with understanding. He speaks slowly to sound Presidential; lots of we're a great nation, pulling together, steadfast behind the heroic health workers etc. I suppose it's the speech writers and autocue machines really rather than him. You'd think the US Government would buy one for Donald Trump so he didn't sound like an incompetent clown but they haven't so he does. Pedro told us that he will be taking the extension of the estado de alarma, (lockdown to you), to parliament for another fortnight's extension.

I heard yesterday that a newspaper survey found that 54% of Spaniards thought that Central Government was doing a poor job. Once upon a time I used to organise sporting and cultural events for young people. I grew to hate disco dance. Over the years I was attacked several times, usually verbally but sometimes physically, because irate mothers held me responsible for the the way some experts had judged the dance performance of their daughter or her team. I'm sure the Spanish Government has made lots and lots of errors in it's handling of the corona virus pandemic but I suppose it would have been the same civil servants and the same experts advising the Government whatever political hue it was. I've also noticed that there is a great similarity between the moans about the handling of the crisis whether that's aimed at Pedro's Socialists or Boris's Conservatives. I don't know but I suppose that re-arranging a country in a couple of weeks is nearly as difficult as dealing with disco dance mothers!

I'm a bit worried that the new two week extension will toughen up the rules about wearing masks in the street. We don't have a mask. Amazon offers several but delivery dates are into June by which times the cats could well have run out of food and eaten us. But, at the moment, all is well in Culebrón and, in a rather surreal way, quite pleasant.

Keep safe!, stay well! or ¡cuidaos!

Looking for an easy life

Ages ago quite a famous teacher of English here was being interviewed on the radio. The reporter asked him how long it took to become bilingual. His answer was the sort of answer you don't want to hear, particularly if you've just bought one of those "Learn Arabic in three months" or "Swahili in ten minutes a day", type courses. He reckoned about 3,000 hours or about four hours a day, Monday to Friday, for nearly four years. As he stressed that was study type study not just listening to the radio or reading magazines. He did have faster methods which, surprisingly, involved spending money on his courses, materials and schools.

The interviewer went on to ask how many of this bloke's students had become bilingual. To be honest my neuron deficient brain doesn't recall exactly what he said but it was some hideously low number - 10, 20, maybe 100 - out of about 25,000 students. He did go on to say that only about 2,000 had crashed and burned; absolutely incapable of picking up the most basic stuff. He reckoned the vast majority abandoned learning when they'd reached a level they were happy with, be that beer ordering or engaging in a heated discussion about environmental politics.

I recognise what this bloke is talking about. I've been trying to learn Spanish for ages but it's years since I've done any real study. I can't remember the last time I sat with a text book trying to memorise verb tables or understand maybe disjunctive pronouns or demonstrative adjectives. I still pretend to be trying to learn things. I often write down a new word that I've read or heard, I read books in Spanish and go to the cinema to see films dubbed into Spanish. My Spanish is alrightish but sometimes I can hear the mistakes I'm making as I fail to make myself understood and I sometimes don't understand. I still shy away from conversations if I can.

Recently I've become very aware of my inability to pronounce the R with sufficient vigour for most Spaniards. They hear the equivalent of "Is this chew weseived?" when I'm trying to say "Is this chair reserved?". Spanish is a language where the link between the letters and the pronunciation of the word is inviolable so the wrong sound in a word can cause profound difficulties. English speakers are used to dealing with inconsistent pronunciation. We read that some ancient band was happy to record a record without any psychological angst at the changed pronunciation of two words spelled the same. Pronouncing so, sew and sow the same (but not if it's a sow) doesn't lead to disbelief amongst the population of Bradford. Spaniards though do wonder how reed and read and red and read can be word pairs. What we perceive as a very close reproduction of the Spanish word can, at times, be almost incomprehensible to a Castilian speaker.

Anyway, unfettered by work I thought it was about time to put a bit more effort into my Spanish. I've found someone willing to exchange some Spanish for English and I'm paying someone to correct my conversational Spanish. It won't work of course. The language hasn't magically seeped in in fourteen years and it won't this time either. Just like the interviewee said what I really need to do is to put in some graft but I'm a bit off hard work so that won't be happening. I don't suppose it'll do any damage though.

Beep Beep Lettuce

Our fridge went beep when the door was opened. It shouldn't. It still worked though. We could live with that. Then the handle came off in my hand. Not so good. A beeping handle-less fridge. I put it off. I tried the enquiry form on the repairer's website. They didn't answer. Nothing for it but a phone-call. I could procrastinate no more. It went alright really. The woman on the phone asked me for the model number. "RD-46," I began. "Sorry?" RD-46. "What?" I tried hard to roll the R. I was reduced to "R - like the capital of Italy, Roma". "Loma?" she went. No, Roberto, Robot, Real, Radio." "Ah, R," she said. D for Dinamarca was easier. The engineer came today. The conversation went well and the fridge is mute though I'm 110€ poorer.

The electrical goods in the kitchen are in open revolt. The kettle, bought eleven weeks ago, started to leak. I had the receipt. I took it back. "No, this isn't guaranteed," said the bloke in the shop. "It's the limescale that's done for it and improper use isn't guaranteed." I became very cross very quickly. "If you want me to ever buy anything, ever again, in this shop - I listed some of the several big things we've bought there - then you will take this back as part payment against a better make of kettle". He argued, I blustered. My Spanish held together remarkably well. I heard myself using a third conditional. I was impressed. We agreed the kettle was guaranteed and I came home with a shiny Bosch one.

As we drove across Castilla la Mancha I knew the sign said to watch out for otters crossing the road. Otter is not an everyday sort of word. I can watch a film in Spanish without too much trouble. I can read a novel in Spanish though I may miss the nuances. I can maintain a conversation - well sort of. Imagine if you can't. Imagine talking to an insurance company about the burst pipes in your house or opening a bank account or going to the doctor with a pain. What do you do when the instructions for the self service petrol pump make no sense to you and you need fuel and it's 2am. Having a conversation using Google Translate, with gestures, drawings, odd words and a lot of smiling is fine when you're on holiday but it's not so good if you need an O-ring for your pool pump and it won't help you decipher the letter from the bank.

I'm of a certain age. Lots of the Britons I know here are of a similar age. A friend, back in the UK, sent me a message minutes ago to say that someone I once worked with has cancer. We're getting to the time of life when death is not such an abstract idea. When chronic illness is probable as well as possible. Someone was talking to me about their concern that they may end up alone, lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by people they couldn't talk to and being subjected to processes they didn't understand. I know of lots of people who have decided that it's time to move from that rural house that looked so idyllic just a few years ago. Now the garden seems boundless. The drive in to town a real chore, and with failing sight and a gammy knee, a potential problem. Some have moved into Spanish towns, others have gone back to the UK.

I know that I write about language a lot but, as I look around me, I understand the British ghettoes, the low level of knowledge about the place we live, the effort that Britons make to find people to provide British television and doctors and plumbers who speak English. It wasn't just the fridge door that reminded me to write this same blog yet again. I am appalled at the lack of support for the boats cruising the Med looking to rescue refugees and migrants. Count the emergency vehicles for a derailed train and compare that to the lack of response to a boat load of people abandoned at sea. I am disgusted at the racist attitudes of far too many people. I heard some MP, on £77,000 a year plus expenses, asking why some refugees don't stop when they get to the first safe country. I wondered if he would have walked from Senegal to Morocco and then crossed the water in a boat from Toys“R”Us to get his job? He wouldn't get it anyway without speaking English.

Number two of two

Chinese buffets are an example. The first time you go to one it's all a bit confusing. The second time, less so, and by the third time you actually get what you want and in the order you want it. I've heard that crows learn quickly but I think we humans are faster.

I've been helping a friend in his meetings with the medical staff at the hospital. If you've read this blog before you will know that I mumble and groan about my Spanish speaking ability all the time. I do speak Spanish though. I gurgle and trip over words, my Yorkshire accent becomes more pronounced and I abandon any clever constructions I may think I know, especially during the first few words, but I usually muddle through.

Hospitals are much less easy to understand than Chinese buffets but, crow like, I suspect we'll soon pick it up. Spanish hospitals speak Spanish which adds a layer of difficulty for non Spanish speakers. Not only do you not know which door to wait outside or knock on but it's not so easy, Blanche DuBois like, to rely on the the kindness of strangers. That's why I've been involved. The first time my friend, his wife and I traipse, en masse, into a new to us doctor's office the doctor asks if I'm the translator. I usually say that I'm a pal who speaks a little Spanish. That generally suffices though it possibly undersells my abilities. Most of we old Britons don't handle Spanish particularly well. When we say "A little" to the question "Do you speak Spanish?" some Britons actually mean they have no more than hello, goodbye, I'd like a pint of lager please and my postillion has been struck by lightning. Their economy with the truth can make my truth sound like an untruth.

I suspect that uncertainty about my abilities may be why one doctor gave us a bit of a drubbing. Her argument was that she needed a translator who could convey the nuances of what she was saying, someone who knew the hospital procedures and, basically, someone more clued up than me. She didn't say that last thing but I understood it anyway. I tend to agree with her. If I can't say dexamethasone and it's a word I need to know then it's not so good. There is also something in my personality that makes me unhappy about talking to strangers and I suggested to my pals that I may be a bad choice as a go between. I told them how, before Google Maps, I would buy a street plan rather than ask someone for directions. My friends though have decided that they prefer dealing with someone they know over someone more technically competent.

They were in the hospital the other day without me. They were working on the assumption that they were there for a procedure. Patients are pretty passive during lots of procedures from a CAT scan to a blood pressure check. Nobody needs to say much as they are strapped into an x-ray machine, they just need to go where directed. But the friends got scolded again. "What happens if there is some problem and you can't tell us about it?

When I keeled over last year and woke up in an ambulance I was able to talk to the paramedics, the next few days in hospital there were no real communication problems. I forget that for other Britons that isn't necessarily the case. The other day, on a forum, I directed a bloke who is having trouble with marketing phone calls to one of the "Robinson List" sites. It wasn't much use to him as it was in Spanish. I don't think that had even registered with me. Crap as I think my Spanish is it's perfectly useable for most situations and it's difficult to remember that for some people even the small things, like knowing what's in a can on a supermarket shelf, is a constant and repetitive daily problem.

Number one of two

I think it would be true to say that the majority of Britons who settle in Spain intend to learn Spanish. The general view seems to be that, after a year or so, we should be getting by followed by a general and constant improvement until we are fluent after maybe four or five years. A longish term project but with immediate gains. That's a vast generalisation. Some people never have any intention of learning Spanish. Others, particularly those who maintain regular and constant relationships with Spaniards through living, working or studying together, may expect to, and actually do, learn the language much faster.

There are as many opinions on learning Spanish amongst Britons living here as there are Britons. I often think that a chap who runs a famous English language learning organisation here in Spain has it right. He was talking about English but the idea holds good for Spanish. He maintains that most people learning English get to whatever level they want or need and then falter or stop. That expertise may be sufficient to get a beer or it may be enough to maintain a detailed conversation about the functioning of the House of Lords. It's a level that suits the individual. Job done, now to rebuild the outbuildings.

Most Britons find it hard to learn Spanish. The sounds are different, there are thousands of words and phrases to memorise, there are structures and formulas to grasp, copy and use and English keeps getting in the way. It's just one huge memory task. People blame their teachers, they maintain that they are too old to learn, they say they get by alright with a few words. As I said, as many opinions as there are Britons living here.

It's easy to see that Spaniards find English just as odd as Britons find Spanish. I'm reading a book at a moment and the character goes for a walk from one Battery Park at the bottom of Manhattan up through Harlem and across to the Bronx. He follows Fordham Road. Now Fordham Road has a certain sound Britons but either the Spanish author, the Spanish proof readers or the Spanish editors don't share that sensibility. Fordham Road is also spelled as Frodham Rd. (possible but wrong) and Fhordam Rd. (impossible in my opinion). The point is not the misspelling but that it seems possible or even correct to Spaniards and my guess is that most Spanish readers won't even notice the error. I'm often Christopher Jhon on documents and there's something similar with the Pinoso Christmas programme. A local theatre group is doing Oliver Tweest, I presumed this was a spoof on Oliver Twist but no, it's a simple typo.

How people choose to learn is as diverse as the methods. Some take classes to try to learn - some want native speakers, others look for people from their own country with a good grasp of the language. Some sign up for miracle courses while others use applications on their mobile phone, watch films, listen to songs and podcasts, there are those who make vocabulary lists and there are even some unreformed types who buy books with CDs in the back cover. Methods and tips are a regular topic of conversation amongst the immigrant British population here. Some of those things come at no extra cost, some, like classes, cost money. Obviously enough most of the same things could be said about Spaniards who want to learn English except that the ones here are not living in a foreign milieu. They're home.

Thinly spread

I have been trying to think of a post for a few days and I couldn't. The rest is just space filler.

My bosses at work asked me if I could design a course for people working in "hosteleria" and I said of course. I nearly always say of course unless they ask me if I want to work with biting and dancing on the table aged children. I knew exactly what they meant with hosteleria, waiters and bar staff and suchlike. I see that the dictionary definition says hotel trade. It's quite odd how much difference there is at times between what Spanish people say and what books and dictionaries and text books say they say.

The book I'm currently reading is Los ritos del agua. As I read any book, particularly if it's in Spanish, I have to look up a fair few words. One of the great advantages of reading on an electronic book is that it has a built in dictionary so I can find key words without interrupting the flow too much. Anyway I came across a word, vahído, which the dictionary says means blackout or funny turn. I could see a use for that word given my personal history so I tried to remember it. I've been here a while now though and I know that it's wise to check with a few Spaniards whether a word is in everyday use before I try to use it in an everyday way. Lots of words are dictionary correct but hardly ever get an outing. Over the years I've struggled to learn several words that I thought would be dead useful - imbornal, escotilla, injerencias and ciclotímico spring to mind - only to find that they are double Dutch to most Spanish people. Nobody seems to use vahído.

Anyway, back to waiters and an English language course. So I asked my bosses if they could find a suitable book for me to lean on whilst I set about doing the basic course outline. As I trawled the Internet I was surprised how much stuff I found, in English, particularly worksheets and vocabulary lists, that I would disagree with. I know it's "better", at least it was better when I was at school in the 1950s and 1960s, to say "May I go to the toilet?" or "May I have more bread, please?" than to say "Can or Could I" but I think it's disservice to teach people "May I" in the 21st Century.

Then I got around to some of the things I would tell the Spanish food and drink people about the sort of things that I thought Britons living in or visiting Pinoso would like to see. One of the first was maybe to use British instead of English. Now I know that Scots like to be Scottish and the Welsh like to be Welsh but I think it may be asking a bit too much to expect a Spanish server to spot the difference between a Maesteg and a Renfrew accent.

Then I thought about information. About how we Britons tend to like things written down. Menus with prices, lists of snacks and the varieties of sandwich. Opening hours and a sample menu, to gauge the price as well as the range, outside the door. Things like that.

Next up were some of the things we do that are a bit out of the ordinary for Spaniards. Butter on bread and nowadays oil too, vinegar on chips, pepper alongside the salt. Drinking hot drinks like tea and coffee with hot food. Not thinking of vegetarianism or even veganism as something odd. Liking your food to be your food rather than having, for instance, communal starters in the middle of the table.

And I wondered about the confusion at times over simple words like eat and drink. Comer is Spanish for to eat but it also means to lunch. Ages ago, when we lived in Ciudad Rodrigo I often used to be in a bar, between classes, at around 4pm in the afternoon. Maybe a little late for lunch in a small Spanish town. It was common for a Briton, or a French person, to approach the bar and ask one of the waiters who looked after the tables in the street, on the terrace, if there was anything to "comer". The servers would say no and turn them away but I knew that inside there were lots of cold foods, tapas, sandwiches and the like that were just what the travellers were hoping for "to fill a gap." A simple misunderstanding. And we understand drink too. "Do you want a drink?" - as someone enters your house means tea or coffee, "Do you want a drink?" - as you talk about what to do in the evening means alcohol. Tricky.

So, to be honest, with a bit of food vocabulary, a bunch of stock phrases, lots of role plays and a bit on our idiosyncrasies I think that building a fifteen hour course will be pretty straightforward.

My Jamaican nan wants to know why I love chocolate spread so much, but mi Nutella

So I'm in a restaurant. I have wine and rice in front of me, outside the sun is shining and I don't have to work. Someone passes who knows me. They ask how I am and I respond that life is terrible. If this were an English person they would give a sort of half hearted, well mannered, version of a smile. If the person were a Spaniard they may well ask why.

I arrived late at the Monday evening intercambio session a few weeks ago and a friend was introducing herself to a Spaniard new to the group. After the formalities she added that English people can be a bit difficult to understand because they, we, joke with the language all the time. I watched as she struggled to explain exactly what she meant but I realised that it was true. When Maggie asks if she should put the kettle on I can't stop myself asking if she thinks it will suit her. I often explain to my students that the greeting "hi" is probably somebody playfully responding to hello pronounced "'lo"  with its opposite and that "hiya" is another form of wordplay against high.

Yesterday evening a Spanish pal posted a list of English words used by Spaniards in everyday conversation for which there is a perfectly good Spanish word available. The list included things like apariencia instead of look or pasatiempo instead of hobby. Along with the like I put the comment, in Spanish, "It's not our fault" and he responded with "Nobody says that it is, Chris". Ooops, that wasn't what I meant at all.

Maggie often tells me that I compound my difficulties in speaking Spanish by giving similarly obtuse answers when Spaniards speak to me. But I can't help it. It's how I think.

To justify  myself to my Spanish friend I responded with a blog I found which started with - El peculiar sentido del humor británico  - the strange British sense of humour can seem disconcerting at first. With strong self criticism, an almost imperceptible sarcasm and a very dry style it may seem like a completely new language.

You say you love me

One of the things I've realised about being old is that my reference points are different to those of younger people. I know that very few people go out and buy a printed newspaper nowadays, I don't either, but I still say “I read such and such in the paper” or “the papers say this or that”, even though I actually read the news on my mobile phone. I think of the telly as having times when programmes are on rather than calling them up on Netflix. Mention playing a game and I visualise football or Monopoly before I think of Destiny 2.

I used to watch the Star Trek: Next Generation. I haven't seen an episode for years as Star Trek isn't particularly popular in Spain. Actually it often takes me aback how culturally unaware lots of Spaniards are about US culture. I'd never quite realised how fifty first state we Britons were until I lived here. Anyway in this particular episode, as I remember, maybe inaccurately, the captain of the Enterprise is stranded on a planet with a non human adversary. Slowly the relationship between the two of them improves but communication is difficult because the non human speaks in cultural references. It would be as though a Briton used the date of the Battle of Hastings, 10th October 1066, as a way of saying, total rout, defeat with long lasting consequences or a turning point on history.

One of the big problems for my students is that the exams they have to pass are written by people who know about 1066, people with whom I share a culture. Those exam writers know about raising money for charities, about schools owning minibuses and about young people going clubbing. Spaniards don't. So when the conversation or the recording that my students need to understand is about a jumble sale for money towards a new minibus, for instance, my students have a cultural hill, as well as a linguistic one, to climb.

Yesterday I had a class where only one student turned up. The student is very young but she's good at English and refreshingly keen on learning. Nonetheless two hours is a long class for even the most dedicated single student. I needed a change of pace. I remembered a song that I'd prepared for another class of teenagers and asked her if she fancied doing the song Friends by Anne-Marie, at which point she burst into song. She went on to tell me lots more songs that she "loved" or "adored" often with vocal accompaniment. Obviously enough she asked me if I knew this or that song or artist and my lack of cultural awareness, of things Spanish and also of things young, soon began to show through.

As we talked the young woman was almost tripping over her words with excitement. Music is obviously something important in her life.  It reminded me that I had seen a list, "in the paper", a piece from el País in English, written by someone called Christy Romer.  I've just Googled the name and it's a him and he's based in Cambridge.  The list was called "12 classic songs guaranteed to get any Spanish house party moving." Now when I'd looked at this list I hadn't believed it. For a start the examples that the article gave of British "never fail" dance floor fillers were No Scrubs and Come on Eileen. Hmm? Anyway, giving that I had a young person in front of me, keen to talk about music, the sort of person who wouldn't, if she were British, be old enough to believe that the funniest thing ever seen on telly was the Only Fools and Horses episode with the chandelier, I went through the list with her. I hadn't thought the listing was any good because they were all very old songs and lots of them, from my limited knowledge of the artists, or just guessing from the song titles, were either very bouncy songs with lots of voices doing the chorus or overwrought solo efforts. It's quite hard to think of UK equivalents but maybe The Specials and Too Much Too Young or Viva España or some collaboration between Madness with Chas and Dave for the bouncy style. For the style of song which requires a pained expression on the singer's face, so typical of lots of quite famous Spanish songs, UK examples might be Tom Jones with Delilah, Barry Ryan with Eloise or maybe a bit of Renée and Renato. The fact that the majority of the songs must have been released twenty five years before my student was born made not a jot of difference. She recognised and sang every single one.

Class over and I was on my way home. I talked to my bosses who are both sub 30 I think. Young in my books. I mentioned the list to them. They too knew all the songs, maybe a bit Andalucia, was their comment but it seemed to me that they too recognised the list as being legitimate if not, necessarily, definitive.

Just another lesson in Spanish culture for me. Curiouser and curiouser!

For anyone who cares and for the few Spanish readers this is the list.

Celia Cruz - La vida es un carnaval
Rafaella Carrà - Hay que venir al sur
Las Grecas - Te estoy amando locamente
Los Del Río - Sevilla tiene un color especial
Gipsy Kings - Volare
Alaska - A quién le importa
Los Manolos - Amigos para siempre
Sevillanas - El Adiós
Camilo Sesto - Vivir así es morir de amor
The Refrescos - Aquí no hay playa
Bongo Botrako - Todos los días sale el sol
Raphael - Mi Gran Noche

The tyranny of mealtimes

I used to listen to the Archers. For those of you that don't know the Archers is a long running British radio soap. The reason that I started to listen was that it used to start at 7.05pm. By then I was usually in the car and on the way to a meeting. And, that's because evening meetings in the UK invariably started at 7.30pm. I don't know whether that's still true. I can't really speak for UK habits nowadays but my guess is that things haven't changed. Likewise I would guess that the most popular slots for dinner reservations in restaurants will be 8pm or 8.30pm. Countries have timetables and most people know that Spain's is a little different.

Making a sweeping generalisation, as though it were the truth, most Spaniards leave the house with a minimal breakfast around 7.30 or 8am and get to work for the usual sort of times – 8,8.30 or 9am. Shops and lots of offices don't open till 10am. There's a mid morning break for something reasonably substantial - a sandwich, fruit, yogurt and drink sort of sized snack. Lunch is somewhere around 2pm or 3pm and I think that the majority of people still go home or to a restaurant and have a quite hefty midday meal. There's time to do a few of the household chores as well as to eat before going back for the second stint of three or four hours work starting at 4pm, maybe at 5pm. Dinner is usually eaten anywhere from 9pm to 11pm and lots of people manage to fit in some sort of snack between lunch and dinner - it's a good time for a tapa. Now that's like saying that everyone in the UK works 9 till 5. There are as many working patterns as there are businesses but the idea of a morning shift and an afternoon shift divided by lunch is a sound generalisation for a good percentage of the population.

So, if a Spaniard were making a dinner reservation 8pm just wouldn't do - most would be still at work and the majority of restaurants would only just be gearing up for the evening anyway. You would be perfectly safe with a 9.30pm reservation, though in some places and at some times of year it may be a little early. 10pm would be fine. Later wouldn't be odd especially in summer or when something was going on. Events, theatre and stuff generally kick off quite early, maybe at 7.30pm or 8pm which doesn't quite fit with the hypothesis that everyone's still at work but I've been to lots of plays that start at 10pm too. In summer, for instance in our local fiesta, many of the performances start at 11pm or midnight.

At work, at the job in Pinoso, they asked me if I fancied doing a couple of intensive 60 hour English courses in July. The truth is that I would rather read a book and lounge in the garden but the tax man sent me a hefty bill this year and I need the money so I said yes. I didn't need to guess much at the timetable. We'd have a slot in the morning and a slot in the afternoon. My arithmetic was up to it; four weeks working Monday to Friday at three hours a session, fifteen hours per week or sixty hours across the month doubled up for the two courses. Probably 9am to 12 noon and probably 4pm till 7pm or maybe an hour later. Either slot would be very normal, very standard.

Then we ran into a snag. My employers run a playscheme in the summer and a venue change meant that the morning slot wasn't open to us. Then the Spanish timetable dealt another blow. We couldn't possibly start before 4pm, any earlier and people wouldn't even have time for a quick lunch. And getting home for the next meal meant that going much beyond 9pm was pushing it a bit too. Again the basic arithmetic that Miss Bushell had driven into nearly 60 years ago came into play. Nine minus four is five and that's less than six and six hours is what you need for two courses of three hours a day. In order to get in the 120 hours for the two courses we'd need 24 sessions. The neat package of the same time slot for a nice self contained 60 hour course was out of the window. Other internal timetabling considerations made it even more complicated until eventually we ended up with a course running across six weeks with a variety of time slots.

I once shared a house with someone who stuck to a strict eight hours work, eight hours leisure, eight hours sleep policy. He was completely out of step with society. He'd have had a hard time of it in Spain.

A theory what I have

I was asked if I'd ever written a post about learning Spanish. To be honest I wasn't sure. Normally my blogs complain about my inability to construct an error free phrase, which Spanish people understand, rather than anything on the methodology. I had a quick search through the blog and I couldn't find anything specific. So, here it is but, before launching into it, I should say that there are tomes and tomes on the theory of learning languages. People who know how brains work have theories about how to learn languages or language acquisition in general. They know much more than me. They are right and I am wrong. This attempt is going to be, relatively, short. It will contain lots of generalisations and it's a personal and not a researched view. And, of course, you need to bear in mind that my Spanish is rubbish.

Learning a language is easy. The vast majority of children do it. The method is also pretty obvious. The children listen to the words and phrases. They grasp that there is an idea behind the word or phrase. Maybe it explains something, maybe it is to give a command or order or maybe it is to transmit information. They learn the words or phrases and then build on those to express their own questions and views on the world. Later they learn how to read and write.

So, one of my first beliefs about learning a language is that it is just one big memory task. Unless you know some words then you won't be able to speak, read, write or listen. You have to learn lots of words and lots of phrases. This is especially true of idiomatic expressions. I use an example with my English language learners. OK, let's get the lead out, let's get cracking and put this baby to bed. It makes sense to me but it would be a bugger to understand if I were Spanish. The Spaniards do the same. Simple combinations of ordinary words that have completely different meanings to the sense of any of the individual words that they are made up of. They are easy to overcome though, you just have to learn them. You'll know a method that works for you for learning things. It is not a fast process. Learning a language for most people takes thousands of hours.

It's not just knowing the words and phrases - it's saying them adequately enough so that they are understood. It doesn't take much to make a word incomprehensible. For instance a Spaniard, speaking English, once asked me for some un-irons. There was no context to help - the word was onions. We English have plenty of trouble with lots of sounds that are easy for Spaniards. I'm not talking about the ones we know are difficult like the double rr or the y that sounds like a throaty j. Take the letter o and the way that you just voiced it to yourself - like oh. So for our town, Pinoso, we tend to say pin-oh-so when the sound is more like pin-oss-oh. What seem like quite small mistakes to us make words incomprehensible to Spaniards who have been brought up with a language that ties the sound of the letters to the sound of the words. Spaniards have a systematic and almost unbreakable set of rules for speaking Spanish. That's why they have so much difficulty saying would, friends or soap. So that section in your Spanish books that gives you examples of how to say the letters and vowel combinations is really, really important.

There's another little aside to speaking a language that is the rhythm that a language has. Think of the way that Italians sing as they speak or how Australians stress the end of a sentence, the way Swedes sound like the chef from Sesame Street. We have a cadence to English that is confusing for Spaniards. English speakers need to try to mimic the Spanish rhythms and tones. Without doing that you're going to have a lot of trouble, for instance, asking a question. ¿Estás de acuerdo?

I'm not a big fan of grammar. The rules for most languages, other than Esperanto, came after the language existed. Google tells me that the first English dictionary was published in 1604, the year that the Hampton Court conference laid down the rules for the King James Bible. That means the language was pretty well established by then. The first decent English dictionary was Samuel Johnson's in 1755. That's the one that Baldrick mentions in Blackadder, the one without sausages in it. The grammar that gets reproduced in grammar books is a description of the way the language is used rather than the rules from which a language is constructed. A bit like the difference between Common Law, based on societal customs recognised and reinforced by the judicial system, and modern laws which are drafted in intricate detail. I can't deny that grammar is useful. I teach grammatical rules in English and you have to learn the basic rules of Spanish grammar if you are going to speak Spanish. You need to know how verb tenses work how genders agree and hundreds of other things but there is a point when the exceptions to grammar rules, in my opinion, make them almost useless. So, again in my opinion, there is good grammar, useful grammar, and almost useless grammar. In an English context think about Tesco and Sainsbury's who speak good English. Nonetheless, they used, in the past, to have ten items or less tills (countable nouns should use fewer) and McDonald's who also speak good English, say I'm loving it despite knowing that stative verbs aren't generally used in the continuous form. On the other hand the difference between the use of you're (you are) and your (belonging to you) is big grammar. Big grammar is something that Tesco or McDonalds can't play with. 

One of the areas of Spanish grammar that confounds most English speakers is the subjunctive. Old people, like me, still use the subjunctive in English from time to time - it is important that he learn the rules or I wish it were sunny - but the form is definitely on the way out. On the other hand it is very much alive and well in Spanish. The rule says something like the subjunctive is used when the meaning of the main clause makes the events described in the subordinate clause "unreal" i.e. not known to be a reality at the time of the sentence. So, for instance if you see a T shirt with a picture of Kurt Cobain on it in a shop window and go into the shop and say that you want the T shirt with the picture of Kurt on it you use the indicative but if you're not sure that the shop has a T shirt with said picture then you have to use the subjunctive - busco la camiseta que lleva una foto de Kurt (you're sure such a shirt exists, indicative) and busco una camiseta que lleve una foto de Kurt (the shirt may or may not exist so you use the subjunctive). Now you tell me that any ordinary person learning Spanish is going to be able to work that out from first principles in the heat of the confusion of trying to construct a sentence and buy a shirt and I'll be happy to call you a liar. On the other hand most subjunctives come after little set phrases - es posible que - for instance, is followed by a subjunctive as are hundreds of others. If you're willing to slog it out and learn all those little introductory phrases then you will get the subjunctive right as often as most Spaniards. We're back to memorising the language.

So, my advice on grammar is to learn the stuff that you use in nearly every sentence you would ever use. Learn how to use articles, adjectives, adverbs, how to decline verbs and, indeed, learn as much grammar as you like and as you possibly can but, as soon as it seems to be becoming too esoteric, fall back on how children learn language and learn some phrases as the basis for other similar phrases.

Something else I would recommend is that you read things in Spanish and listen to things in Spanish. Spaniards and Britons do not use the same language to express the same idea. What the language learner is after is how to express what they want to say. Most Britons can say "good morning" in Spanish but if they were to overthink it then they're actually saying goods days - "buenos días". I sometimes despair when a fellow Briton is complaining about a Spanish waiter asking "¿Qué te pongo?" because, the Briton says, that the phrase means "What I put you?" Alright, the first definition of poner in the Spanish-English dictionary may be put but it's not the only one and, for heaven's sake, the question is obvious enough. Consider that the idea is "what do you want?" or "what can I get you?" even though there aren't a lot of directly translatable words in the phrase.

Just to finish off here are some disconnected jottings in no particular order and mainly for people living in Spain. I like classes because, once you've signed up, you feel you have to go. The people who employ me in Pinoso at Academia 10 would be very happy to sell you a class. Text books, learn Spanish type text books, vary in quality but most of the modern ones I've seen are pretty good. In Pinoso there is an intercambio session - half an hour of Spanish in return for half an hour of English every Monday evening from 8.30 at the Coliseum in Constitución. Talking to yourself is good because you realise the words you can't pronounce and you can often hear yourself making mistakes. Describing things as you walk around might help. Reading things like signs and number plates as you do the shopping is simple and easy. Five words or phrases at a time rather than the first two pages of your new vocabulary book. Start by watching TV ads rather than feature films. If you like reading Mills and Boone better the Spanish equivalent than starting with Episodios nacionales. Maybe set your phone or Tom Tom to Spanish rather than English. And a long etcetera.

Old familiar ways

I do a Spanish class each Monday. I do it to make sure that I speak at least a little Spanish each week. Otherwise I probably wouldn't. One doesn't need much Spanish in a supermarket or a bar. In my job the expectation is that I speak English. At home Maggie's English is as good as mine and she makes sure that we watch English speaking TV.

Last week the young woman who teaches me Spanish had written a short piece about a local festival. I noticed that it was tagged as level B1. This is one of the levels of the Common European Framework for language learning. The description of level B1 says that someone at this level can understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in everyday situations and can deal with most situations likely to arise in an area where the language is spoken. People who do level B1 English courses with me can, in reality, hardly string two words together.

Yesterday we went to see a film called Tarde para la ira which translates as something like Too Late for Anger which is a film that won lots of awards in the Spanish equivalent of the BAFTAs or Oscars. Without the pre film blurb and without the images on the screen I would have had no idea what was happening at all - it was far too hard for me to understand.

Today we went to the village restaurant, Restaurante Eduardo. Restaurants are easy. The language is easy but today I was lost for most of the time. Eduardo is usually a bit vague and the trick is to ask for what you want and see if he has it rather than expect him to tell you what he has. But today I had hardly any idea what he was talking about.

When I was young it would have been an experience that I would have described with the, then, very trendy adjective of surreal. Today, as I wondered what Eduardo was saying the adjective, in English, that sprang to mind after all this time here was pathetic.

I thought the word was plurilingual

There is a local language in the Valencian Community which is called Valencian in English, Valenciano in the worldwide version of Spanish sometimes called Castellano and Valencià in, well in Valencià. Most people seem to think that it's not the same language as Catalan but the academic body that looks after the the rules and vocabulary of the language says they are wrong and that Catalan and Valenciano are the same with local variations.

As you would expect, and as I've reported before, there is a fairly strong local movement to promote Valenciano as a cultural heritage. Maggie keeps saying she's going to have a go at learning some. Rather her than me; I have enough problem with standard Spanish. Lots of people speak Valenciano as their principal language but there are lots of areas in this region where Valenciano is hardly spoken. Apparently about 50% of the population in the Valencian Community can speak the language and 85% can understand it.

Yesterday, over my work days lunchtime sandwich, I was reading the magazine produced by the communications team from the Pinoso Town Hall. The magazine's name, Cabeço, comes from a local hill. You will notice it is a Valenciano word with one of those French type cedillas. Our local council has a socialist majority and, as you would expect from a team directly employed by them, the reports in the magazine tend to highlight all the good things that are going on in the town. Most of it is pretty anodyne stuff anyway; new park benches here, a bit of tarmac there, what's on at the local theatre but, if you want to, you can argue about anything - wooden park benches - in this climate? Money on park benches when people are out of work?

There is some space in the magazine for the opposition political parties. Not much space but some. I always enjoy reading that because it means I find out where the local frictions are. I nearly always find something I didn't know because the Spaniards I talk to don't talk to me about that sort of thing and most of the Britons I talk to know even less about local controversy than me.

So, in the magazine, the conservative bunch were having a bit of a dig at the local budget - how much of it goes on staff, why rent office space instead of using council property etc. Then I got to a bit about education and about the use of Valenciano in the local schools. I read it twice, then a third time. I understood most of the words, I understood the sentiment but I didn't really understand what it was talking about although the gist was obviously that Valenciano was being pushed in all the schools in the Valencian Community, as a result of a Regional Government policy, which was bad for people who mainly spoke Castellano and would mean they'd have to pay for English classes. How did English come into this?

For years parents in the Valencian Community have been able to decide whether their children do the majority of the subjects in Castellano or in Valenciano. Currently seven of every ten youngsters are taught in Castellano. The Regional Government, which is ruled by a coalition of socialists and nationalists, has decided to change this twin path for a multilingual option. Now state and state assisted schools have to decide whether to slot into one of three levels - basic, intermediate or advanced - depending on how much of their basic teaching is done in Valenciano and how much English they offer. If the school teaches mainly in Castellano they end up in the basic level, and those which teach principally in Valenciano go into intermediate or advanced.

I should mention here that a very common model in Spain is for a bilingual school. Outside of the communities with a local language this usually means that the school teaches in Spanish and English though I'm sure that there are some which teach in Spanish and French or Spanish and German. Murcia, the community next to Alicante, the one in which I teach, has tens and tens of bilingual schools. Maggie used to work in one where she taught English in English, Art in English and a subject, Conocimiento del Medio, which is a sort of mix of natural and social sciences, in English. Personally I'm glad that I'm not a Spanish youngster having to struggle with a foreign language as well as the intricacies of the subjects themselves but it seems to be an accepted idea here.

Oddly it's English that is the incentive in this change from teaching in Castellano to Valenciano. Schools which teach half of the curriculum in Valenciano can up the percentage of the curriculum that they teach in English to 30%. This means that at the end of their school secondary career students will automatically get a B1, lower intermediate qualification in English, and a C1, lower advanced, qualification in Valenciano. It also cuts the amount of Castellano to the bare minimum allowed by Central Government legislation.

The Regional Government argument is that Valenciano and English are minority languages with Castellano being way out in front, so this change gives youngsters the opportunity for good levels in three languages whilst also helping to preserve a local cultural heritage. The detractors say that schools which cater to Castellano speakers are basically being punished by denying them increased access to English which, in the long run, is likely to be more useful. That's where the link was to English. The argument I had read in the magazine was saying that by denying Castellano speaking schools as much English for free, in the schools, the good parents would feel obliged to send their children for private classes.

What I found really odd about this was that I didn't know. After all I live here. I read the news most days, I listen to radio news and I even sometimes watch news on the telly but this policy had passed me by all together.