I Went
out for late supper and then on to a Jazz club last night with 3
friends, a couple and a bachelor friend and escort. It was rather jolly
and enjoyable, at least in the beginning. Into the 2nd round of drinks
in the Jazz club, the British wife of my Spanish friend asked the
waitress, in her limited Spanish, whether it was possible for the
central heating to be turned down a notch or two, because: "Yo soy muy
caliente.", while madly fanning herself with both her open hands to
illustrate her words. The husband, in near perfect
English, responded: "That's a nice change!". I limited myself with a
discreet smile, but the waitress had chuckled audibly with her response:
"De verdad?", and my escort was grinning from ear to ear. The
translation of the conversation went in fact like this:
Wife: "I am very hot (in the sense of sexual heat, as a dog bitch on heat)
Husband: "That's a nice change!" (rather sarcastic I thought)
Waitress: "Really?" (hahahaha)
Me: (smiling, speechless)
My Spanish friend: (grinning like an idiot)
When the wife noticed there's too much conspiratorial smiles and eye rolling, and that she might be the one to have caused it, insisted that we explained what did she say or do was wrong. The husband told her what she should have said: "Tengo mucho calor", which means she was feeling hot or too warm. If she had let go of it at that point and joined in the fun taking it as a lesson learned or an unplanned little joke, it would have been just fine, but she suddenly spat out and declared the waitress, the husband and in fact all the Spanish "stupid"; no idea whether I was included or not. She continued by saying that "for a place like Roses where they depend on tourists for their survival, it's nothing less than stupid not to learn to speak English properly or sufficiently, instead of expecting foreigners to speak Spanish." That just rubbed me the wrong way. Well the Spanish are in their own country. If they know English, wonderful. If they didn't want to bother, it's their prerogative. Why it's always the foreigners, curiously more British than those from other countries, who always expect the Spanish to learn to speak English, who had chosen this country as their home, some of them have been living here for 20 or 30 years, have not shown the courtesy of learning just the basic Spanish at all, not enough to even order a meal in a restaurant or shop for groceries? And when they cause some unavoidable laughs with their misused Spanish words, instead of expressing thanks for having been put right, and therefore a good lesson learned, they get furious and insulting. I have always noticed the British especially, who would associate similar sounding or similar spelling to translate a Spanish word with the closest 'look or sound alike' English one. For instance, the following are a few examples that occur over and over: They will translate the Spanish word 'constipación (cold, chill) as constipation.
Or 'actual' (present, now) as actual or actually
Or 'cubiertos' (cover charge, in some restaurants) as cutlery because the dictionary says so.
Taking me home in his car, my Spanish friend and I were still laughing about the 'incident' and he leaned over at the red light stop and whispered to me: "Y tu, eres caliente tambien?" (Are you hot too?). I wanted to say "Por ti no!" (For you no). Instead I said in English: "Not tonight, Josephine!". He, not knowing a word of English, wanted a translation. I told him to memorized the phrase and ask his Spanish friend the meaning. Guess I won't see much of him again! |
- Current Mood:
Blah
Ecstatic
Naughty