Language is Hard-Google Translate Helps….. Sort Of

We’ve booked our tickets and our camper and called the Irish relos we’ve never met, and maybe the English ones will get a call too… I’m still deciding. We’ve secured the house sitter and dog lover and we’ll pack on Sunday. Easy stuff.

Now I have to tell Dina, our cleaner, that we’re going on holidays and she can still come and do the things best left for when the family is absent. I will give her keys … but how do you convey all the details when she doesn’t habla Ingles and I don’t habla Espanol! I could take her to the dry cleaner, I could call my friend who speaks, except she’s out of state and out of range. I could call our business partner in Spain but it’s late… or I could type it all out on google translate and hope for the best that I didn’t tell her to sell the dog and eat the fish!

Language is hard. I am really trying but Spanish is one of those fast languages, unless she slows down and even then I’m fucked. I get every other word. I can tell her things in single words but having a conversation or adding the joining words to make a sentence is still so far beyond me that it’s just funny to watch as I try… There’s a lot of smiling and nodding with neither of us having any fucking clue what the other one is saying. It’s actually hilarious. But whatever right?! The house is super clean.

That’s just how it goes, I’m learning and every week I learn more and eventually I will know stuff but in the moment when you need to convey information and you can’t, it’s hard and frustrating and just dumb. Curses on those who caused God to do the Tower of Babel thing… scattering man far and wide and jumbling up the languages… Fuck THEM!  They did this, otherwise we’d all be speaking latin or aramaic or something but it would be understood by everyone. That’d be awesome.

But in the meantime, I will endeavour to do it as best I can. And I’m sure she’ll either come and clean or she won’t, she’ll either surprise the house sitter or she won’t but rest assured Sir Lickalot will be waiting at the door with a waggily tail and special lick on the knee … El Perros are good like that!

 

no habla espanol

 

Comments 13

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  1. Google Translate has a phone app where you can talk into it, and it translates aloud. So you could “converse” with a phone in between you. That sounds like fun.

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  2. I have SO been there. The cleaners at work somehow think I speak WAY more than I do and are always telling me things in Spanish. I think maybe they are super juicy secrets about the family and they think I’m “cool” since we both “work” for them. I’m not cool, however, and I would TOTALLY tell me bosses if they were talking crap. That is, if I could understand the crap. Maybe they’re just saying we need more windex. I’ll never know.

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  3. So true. My 4 years of high school Spanish left me long ago; at least I can still say “Hablo espanol un poquito” so they don’t have too high of expectations!

  4. So true! Last week my hubby was traveling in Russia & Paris for work. He totally used Google Translate. Said he would type something in on his phone, hit translate, then just hold it up so the other person could read it. I’ll have to tell hi about that app Jenn mentioned. Good luck with the cleaner and have fun on your trip!

  5. My Spanish is limited to a handful of slang and offensive adjectives. I can tell you that it’s very important to know the difference between “pig” and “kitchen”. Muy importante.

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