Life in Culebrón

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...

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; absolute...

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 gua...

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...

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 f...

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 d...

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...

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 ...

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 substan...

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 ...

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 par...

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 wor...