From Lost to the River

One year, one month and 3 weeks.

That’s how long I have been here. People (hostel guests) ask me daily and the answer is usually this precise. I guess if I hadn't arrived in Sevilla on the first day of the month, I would be a lot vaguer in the answer. I am obsessively accurate but not that good at counting.

Another question I get asked on a regular basis is if I am fluent in Spanish by now. Most days my answer would be: “DEFINE FLUENT”.

If by fluent, you mean, is your Spanish as good as your English, then HELL, NO.

If you mean, can you get by daily life without too much damage, or in other words, can you order a chamomile tea at the bar without ending up with a glass of sherry –a recurrent occurrence among customers, then, I AM NOT DOING TOO BAD, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

If you know me a little though, you should know I am god damn demanding and until I don’t need to ask poor Victor to explain the whole Tapas menu to me (one of my guilty little pleasures, I admit), then I will keep pulling a face of disgust and utter self- disappointment when you ask me about my Spanish.

This doesn’t mean I am not sort of proud at the same time. My pride you see, resides in being pretty good at pretending I am nearly fluent. Obviously, I am fooling mainly non-natives but that’s a start. Sometimes even, if I don’t have to talk for too long, I can sort of fool locals too.

How do I do that?, I hear you ask.

Well, let’s see if I can explain it with this French joke I told my dad when I was 12.

It’s about this zoo owner who decides to order some new animals for his park. So he writes a letter to this guy to ask for a couple of domestic birds -I know what you’re thinking; domestic birds are a rather unexciting thing to have in a zoo, but I had to adapt the joke in order for it to be translated. In the French version, the zookeeper wants a couple of jackals. Much more thrilling I know, so let’s just pretend.

“ Dear sir,

Could you please send me 2 gooses?"

Something doesn’t look right. So he crumbles the letter and starts again.

“ Dear sir,

could you please send me 2 geeses?"

Again, he’s unsure. He throws the paper in the bin, thinks carefully and comes up with a new tactic.

“Dear sir,

could you please send me one goose?

Yours sincerely,

The Zookeeper

PS: Actually, now that I’m thinking about it… please make that two.

As you will be able to tell by now, I wasn’t the most fun 12-year-old to be around. Of course, I knew a couple of mildly-dirty jokes too but I’m not here to prove anything except my ingenuity when it comes to speaking Spanish.

So now let’s put things back in their context. I’m at the bar, I’m not even half drunk yet - Spanish, like the majority of languages, comes more fluently with alcohol, and I want TWO drinks. 

Plural in Spanish is easy, you just have to add an S at the end of the word.

A beer: Una cerveza

Two beers: Dos Cervezas.

Easy indeed. Yes, but I don’t like beer –more evidence for you that if I may seem fluent at times, I haven’t made much of an effort to adapt to the culture.

So what happens if you want “ron miel”? What do you do with the S??

No idea.

“Hola, dame un ron miel” I tell the barman. Give me a ron miel. This is how you talk to people here. I find it hard, so usually I add please and thank you to the same sentence. This is another thing that makes me NOT SO FLUENT.

Guy makes my drink and hands it to me.

“Otra cosa?”

“Sí. I say. Otro ron miel”.

The barman ends up angry because I could have saved him some time. On the other hand, several potential grammatical mistakes have been avoided. So I just smile apologetically and lower my cleavage for a couple of seconds.

And that, my friends, is how it’s done.

Celebrating one year of living in my favourite city.