{"id":871,"date":"2016-06-02T09:17:33","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T16:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.majorscorner.com\/?p=871"},"modified":"2026-03-07T18:12:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T03:12:50","slug":"under-the-palapa-the-rigours-of-spanish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/majorscorner.com\/?p=871","title":{"rendered":"Under the Palapa      &#8220;The rigours of Spanish&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - http:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top:5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Under the Palapa      &quot;The rigours of Spanish&quot;\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>Unkind people are always asking me why I am not yet bilingual, and it hurts. My French teacher at boarding school when I was a boy would sigh and call me an amiable half-wit after listening to my translation of a few lines of Victor Hugo. It has been clear from the start that English and only English would be my lingua franca in this life.<!--more--><br \/>\nBut that is not to say I have completely given up, for my current wife of some 30 years chases me off to Spanish classes when she finds me hiding inside the cupboard.<br \/>\nEach time I go to these things I end up wearing the dunce hat, it seems. People who have never heard the language spoken appear to get the rules after a brief introduction by the happy teacher. I, on the other hand do not make him happy.<br \/>\nMr. Fergus (not his real name), a retired Spanish instructor from Canada, opens his condo several times a week to teach the language he has loved so long. However, his face falls on catching sight of me as if he wished he taught Beginners\u2019 Plumbing.<br \/>\nI dart past the others to get the one soft chair in his place. He has made his condo into an authentic hacienda, whereby everything is big, wooden and hard. To spend an hour there is akin to being on your knees in anguished confession.<br \/>\nThe good news in all of this is that after a lesson, I feel as if I am bilingual, but only in the subject that Mr. Fergus taught that particular day. Of course I am usually unilingual by the time I reach home and have forgotten everything, but for awhile I walk the streets of our town babbling in Spanish. But I have had one or two upsets along the way.<br \/>\nFor instance walking home after a very thorough lesson dealing with family figures, I was approached by a local who, noticing that I wore a watch, asked me \u201cQu\u00e9 hora?\u201d which even I knew meant he was asking what time it was.<br \/>\nHowever I was so programmed to the family theme, I immediately said \u201cTengo dos hermanas,\u201d or \u201cI have two sisters.\u201d This produced a look of consternation from the man in question, who must surely have thought he was talking to an imbecile.<br \/>\nI could not stop. \u201cTengo un tio\u201d (\u201cI have one uncle\u201d). He began to move away from me. I felt something was wrong, so I kept saying things from the recent lesson, which made the poor guy flee. I have seen him several times since but when I wave at him he crosses the street and reverses his direction.<br \/>\nIt is frustrating for someone like me who loves everything Mexican, or at least most things, but who cannot learn the language that comes so easily to many around me. I know there are others like me out there, but we are bashful.<br \/>\nPeople are always asking me to join groups. There are dozens of them sprouting up all the time. I won\u2019t get into what they do because I am bound to upset someone, but there are lots.<br \/>\nI generally decline to join anything. People are always sneering, \u201cWhat do you do every day?\u201d Well, as the song goes, \u201cStaying alive, staying alive.\u201d I seem to be fully occupied in making it to tomorrow and then the next day, because frankly I am worried about the whole \u201cdropping dead\u201d thing. I love my 5 o\u2019clock martini and then the mandatory bottle of Chablis through dinner followed by a \u201cSticky,\u201d as an Australian friend of mine called an after-dinner Remy.<br \/>\nBut here is the big thing. If you do that at night, you must have a regimen for the morning that will mend the previous night\u2019s \u201ckidney killer.\u201d<br \/>\nSo two glasses of water upon awakening, followed by a two-kilometre run along the malecon. Exercises on the way back. More water. Hot lemon water followed by tea with honey and yogurt with fruit, generally berries.<br \/>\nAll will be good, or at least it is so far.<br \/>\nCopyright Christopher Dalton 2016<br \/>\nwww.majorscorner.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - http:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top:5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Under the Palapa      &quot;The rigours of Spanish&quot;\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>Unkind people are always asking me why I am not yet bilingual, and it hurts. My French teacher at boarding school when I was a boy would sigh and call me an amiable half-wit after listening to my translation of a few lines of Victor Hugo. It has been clear from the start that English [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-under-the-palapa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/majorscorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/majorscorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/majorscorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/majorscorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/majorscorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/majorscorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":872,"href":"https:\/\/majorscorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions\/872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/majorscorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/majorscorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/majorscorner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}