I was at the store today and struck up a conversation with the woman bagging my groceries. I told her that I envied the fact that she is bilingual.
DH and I both had a year of Spanish in high school in addition to two of Latin. I can remember the opening conversation in the SRA module for Spanish I, and I quoted it to my bagger, who looked confused. I explained that it was the first thing they had us memorize....a conversation between two friends. "Hola, Isobelle....."
She told me that her son, who is bilingual, had taken Spanish in school and was getting poor grades. It seems that his teacher had a Castillian accent, and her son was unwilling to adapt to it, from the dialect he had learned at home. When he finally wised up to the waste of time, it was too late, and he'd lost a year of study.
DH hopes to sail again in water deeper and bluer than that of Lake Michigan. He picked up a book that gives him phrases to use should he need help repairing a diesel engine in a port where only Spanish is spoken. It seems to me that he needs to know how to say...."It's broken. It won't go. How much to fix it?" and that should get him by, but you know that he'll memorize the names for motor parts, figuring that it will be cheaper if he does his own labor.
How do you say "carburator" in Spanish???
Comments (5)
I was once in a minibus in the Picos in Northern Spain and we ran out of petrol in a very isolated area, while heading to pick up the rest of our group.
As the only Spanish I know is "2 beers please" and the only Spanish my companion knew was "a packet of condoms please" (yes, we were a right pair!!), it took us a while to find anyone with some petrol to sell us. About 12 miles of a walk in scorching heat if I recall correctly... and then we only got a gallon, which just about got us to a campsite where a nice French couple (I can manage French!) sold us their 2 petrol cans so we could get to the next petrol station.
Posted by Blue Witch | May 26, 2004 6:58 AM
Posted on May 26, 2004 06:58
I lived in Albuquerque for seven years during which time I learned pitifully little Spanish (of any stripe!) I would use a word-for-word translation of "gas atomizer thingy" for carburetor--LOL. Oh, wait, my Spanish/English dictionary lists carburador. (And that's about all of the help that you can get out of me!)
Posted by Cop Car | May 26, 2004 5:48 PM
Posted on May 26, 2004 17:48
It's okay....we don't have to learn "carburetor." I don't think a diesel engine has one.
I had to learn to sing in Italian, French and German for Voice 101 waaaaaaaaayyyy back in the dark ages. Of the three, my mouth liked French the best. I don't roll my rrrrs very well, and the occasional umlaut(pardon my spelling if I got that wrong) does me in.
BW...I've always been fortunate to travel with people who were bilingual, and I've never run out of gas. Other than the 12 miles in the heat, I think you were lucky.
Posted by Buffy | May 26, 2004 7:49 PM
Posted on May 26, 2004 19:49
Too funny! When I wrote the above comment, the last sentence was about how boats must be the last hold-out for carburetors since autos and airplanes are all fuel injected. Then, I realized that you were talking about a diesel and I deleted the sentence--never thinking about the fact that diesels don't have carburetors, either! Or did I even know that? Well, I was a Structures puke--not Power Plant! (And I've lost interest in the inner workings of my car as I've aged. The only thing that I lift the hood for, these days, is to replenish the windshield wiper fluid.)
Posted by Cop Car | May 27, 2004 10:46 AM
Posted on May 27, 2004 10:46
Like you, I said to the Asian checkout girl in Asda that I envied her being bilingual. She then told me that she wasn't bilingual she was a heterosexual.
Posted by Wendy | May 30, 2004 2:17 PM
Posted on May 30, 2004 14:17