There´s No Such Thing as a Segue...

The Worst Spanish in the World is spoken after classes at Escuela Runawasi, the small school I’ve been holed up in the past few weeks in Cochabamba. The students in the school are all young, mostly Swiss and all new to Spanish. During the breaks, the main language is Swiss-German, which I’ve since learned is a largely phonetic, unwritten cousin to German-German. But that doesn’t mean it’s any easier to listen to.

To escape the solitude of our homestays, a few of us get together every other night or so to down a beer and try, miserably, to speak to each other in what is inevitably our second or – in the case of the Swiss – our fourth language.

I started our group off on the wrong path when I arrived two weeks ago and introduced myself. “Hola,” I said, “Me llamo Bill, soy un escritorio.” Everyone nodded politely, because no one realized I had just said “Hi. I’m Bill and I’m a desk.” If I had just left the “–io” off I’d be a writer. Now we all laugh about mistakes like that, but we go right ahead making them.

Everyone’s favorite conversationalist in the evening beer group is Barbara H. I don’t know what the H really stands for, but I know what I call her. During her first week, I asked Barbara where in Switzerland she came from. She replied with the name of a small town that neither I nor any of the Swiss at the table had heard of.

“I am,” she said, in English, “how do you say…an ‘Egg of the Country.”

Since then, Barbara H. has been Barbara “Huevo”, the Spanish word for egg.

Our foursome is comfortable with each other, but because we’re often trying to find a way – any way – to contribute to a group conversation, the subject of our talks bounces around radically. There’s no such thing as a segue. You can be talking about your afternoon in the local markets when someone will earnestly ask what the word for “to vomit” is in Spanish and the conversation shifts smoothly to the new subject at hand.

This strange reality is incredibly liberating and frank. We can ask each other almost anything, as long as it’s in Spanish. No one will bat an eye if you ask something like “If I eat this fried sausage, do you think I will have very fast intestines?” Somehow it’s all part of the learning process. Last night, our conversation was more of the same:

“Hey Huevo, do you have any animals at your house in Switzerland?”

“We have some dogs, a cat, and a couple…quack, quack!”

“Ducks. Why does your family had…no, have, ducks?

“Because in our garden, the ducks it eats…they eat…the animals that carry their homes on their backs.”

“Escargot?”

“Sí, escargot. But sometimes the animals-that-look-like-dogs-and-live-in-the-country [ie. foxes] try to eat the ducks. And last month one of our ducks dies…will die?...died, because of an accident.”

“What accident?”

“My brother had a rock, and the rock arrived in the duck’s head.”

“Oh, what barbarity!”

At one point, after we suffered through an absolutely brutal description of how Huevo’s brother-in-law tried, but failed, to buy a house that Huevo now lives in, our German friend Lilo broke in to say she had gone into town that day.

If said quickly, the phrase “I have gone” (phonetically “ey hecho”) can sound – to our untrained ears – like the title of the famous opera “Aida.”

“Aida?” Huevo asked surprisingly.

“No, he hecho!” Lilo said and we all started laughing. But then Huevo raised an eyebrow and grinned back at us.

“You can laugh, but at least this Egg of the Country knows a famous opera by Verdi.”

Touché.