They all speak funny Mum (Part II)

Having established clear blue water between the "sod it, I can't be arsed's" and the British folk who want to put some effort in, this blog continues; paying scant heed to those linguistically challenged individuals for whom Spain is just Southend-on-Sea with a bit more sunshine and cheaper lager. I'll waste no further words on those for whom Spanish isn't their first language, won't ever be a passable second, and asking for a pizza, eleven more beers and then the bill is the limit of their efforts to integrate.

For the ex-patriots in Spain who make the effort, an amazing new world of opportunity, fabulous experiences, amazement and new friends for life quickly beckon. Spanish people are warm, generous, interesting and fun, so why come to this sensational country and largely ignore all it has to offer? (Any ideas? nope, I gave up too). The thing is Spanish folk are bloody intelligent, so while you learn the basics it's virtually nailed on any locals you're acquainted with will have more than a smattering of English. This is perfect because between what you've picked up and their existing entry level English, some sort of a conversation is always perfectly possible. Trust me here because I know, I'm the proud partner of an amazing Spanish lady, who, every day since I met her has made me smile, laugh out loud, patiently answered way too many inane questions, and, from a pretty crappy personal starting point, increased my understanding of Spanish history, culture and custom. It wasn't always so!

On the evening her and I met any kind of conversation was very much a low priority, in the very few pauses between lengthy snogs, breathing took precedence over small talk and the language barrier wasn't actually very obvious. Date number two a week or so later was when the hard work began.  Like most Brits in Spain tend to find, organising drinks, food and then the bill was fairly easy, in between all that though we had to get to know each other. Three hours, one civilised peck on the cheek and a massive headache - caused by having to concentrate so hard - later, I headed home home determined to learn the lingo. The next morning, killer headache a thing of the past courtesy of industrial strength paracetamol, I began my Spanish classes. Speaking a foreign language is actually not a lot different to playing golf - with one you open your gob and words spill out, for the other you heave a club behind your back and then twat the ball. Thing is, until you're taught how to do it properly, you've got no idea how awful you are. With my tutor, so bad were my initial attempts at conversing with him, quite possibly way worse than the poorest Spanglish, he actually took me back, in childlike fashion, to learning the alphabet.  On the upside, pretty quickly I figured out that relying on Google Translate to help me whilst "chatting" to my new lady friend with MSN really was simply storing up trouble.

It would have been so easy to just give up and revert to a sedentary lifestyle on an "urb" with hundreds of likeminded Brits, but no, I persevered, developed my own unique brand of Spanish and slowly, way too slowly, began to do a little more than just get by. Four years after making her acquaintance, it's still a source of mild frustration that the girlyfriend, whose English at the outset was in no way better than my Spanish, has come on in leaps and bounds whilst my grasp of her tongue, (no stupid that was the night I met her), is only above average and not completely fluent.

Next time some common mistakes, all of which I've made at different times, and a few examples of some excellent Spanish phraseology.