On her own Carol entered the hair salon and emerged with an appointment for the following Thursday, 8 May at 11:15. She was particularly proud to have committed her very personal standard of hairdressing (“just cover the roots!”) to a completely foreign country’s standards of beautician care. But she had done it, and with only a spoonful of English provided by a client in the shop, together with a tapas of Spanish Carol had learned  to date.

After more than a year with two online teachers, six hours of instruction plus homework per week and Duolingo for pronunciation practice, I can truthfully report that Spanish remains the most inscrutable language I’ve ever tried to learn. At least when someone speaks to me in French I know I’m being condescended to and in German I’m being threatened. But Spanish? I honestly still can’t tell if someone is patiently explaining the difference between paella and pizza or politely requesting I move my chair off their foot.

  It was when I suggested she change the appointment to conform to the time of my Spanish lesson that day with Spanish with Teresa when Carol decreed I go back i on her behalf. She gave that directive using the other two Spanish words she knows that I will not repeat in mixed company here.

  There’s some history with me and time. Returning to Barcelona from a day trip to Salvador Dali’s birthplace and museum a couple of years ago, I purchased two return train tickets for the week after the one we were needing them for that day. Since then, I’ve been permanently retired from making reservations of any kind. 

  But since this was my request for her appointment change, I owned it. 

The scene of the language crime.

I was confidently able to request a change to the appointment we’d just made. But thinking that Europeans went by military time, I told them I wanted the appointment for “16:00” instead of just saying “4:00.” It took a couple of confused minutes but I had finally succeeded – speaking only Spanish mind you – to change Carol’s appointment to 11:15 on 16 May, or the day after we were scheduled to leave Rota. Happily, the client who spoke English was able to adjust things back to what they were before I’d walked in.

  This is neither the first or the worst example of me trotting out my Spanish skills on an unsuspecting service industry. The last time we were here I ordered a cheese omelet for Carol on a day when breakfast on the beach would make a perfect beginning to the day. 

As you can see I didn’t screw up the appointment.

But just like a mushroom omelet would  not be what you’d want set down in front of you and your fellow football mates at the start of Sunday Night Football at your favorite sports bar, neither were the nachos tortillas grandes that wound up being delivered to our breakfast table. I said I probably pointed to the wrong item; Carol suggested it was probably my Spanish. (In my defense, I do believe “omelet” and “tortilla” are synonyms in Spanish. ) 

In Spanish there are two past tenses. Talk about deja-vu all over again.

  After more than a year with two online teachers, six hours of instruction plus homework per week and Duolingo for pronunciation practice, I can truthfully report that Spanish remains the most inscrutable language I’ve ever tried to learn. At least when someone speaks to me in French I know I’m being condescended to and in German I’m being threatened. But Spanish? I honestly still can’t tell if someone is patiently explaining the difference between paella and pizza or politely requesting I move my chair off their foot.

  I can only imagine what the two-year-olds here are thinking when I try talking to them.