Lost in the Andes

IDIOMA 

After more than a year of “immersion” Spanish I thought I would have it down by now but, nothing could be further fom the truth.  How can one verb have more than fifty variations depending on tense, format, and the alignment of the moon that day?  And what's up with words having a gender?  OK I get that a dog can be a perro or perra, but what about the word for brick?  Recently I was at the construction yard to pick up a few bricks for a small project but couldn’t remember if it was ladrilla or ladrillo.  I tried picking one up and looking on the bottom side but apparently my eyesite isn’t as good as the guy’s helping me because right away he knew it was masculino.

Then there was the time in Chile when I meant to ask the cab driver how much the trip was going to cost me.  Boy did I get a funny look.  It was only later that I found out I had used the word vieja instead of viaje.  Turns out its impolite to ask a man “How much for your old lady?”

Even my wife, who is ten times better than me at Spanish, sometimes has problems with accents.  When she informed a friend that she was looking to buy a ticket to the city of San Juan she used a Spanish word for ticket that only applies to the lottery here.  To make it worse, her Texas drawl turned San Juan into the Spanish pronounciation for Salmon.  Her friend just couldn’t stop laughing about someone wanting to buy a lottery ticket for a fish.

Maybe there is a reason the word for language and idiot or so similar here (Idioma and Idiota).  Oh well what did I expect?  I don’t even speak my first language that well and here I am trying to learn a second.  In June I started with private Spanish lessons so maybe I’ll figure it out one day but in the mean time I’m the guy wondering, “La Calle, or El Calle”;  I don’t even know what part of the street you're suppose to look at to determine its gender; here South of the Equator.

Lo Siento

I'm sorry its been so long since I updated the blog.  We are all fine and I promise to do better with more frequent updates.

This guys Spanish is better than mine 

Sunset in Bariloche

Johnathon Livingston Seagull is alive and well and lives in Patagonia