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10.8.12

PALM FLOWERS and SPANISH

The palm trees are in flower!
Seen on this morning's walk - another treat for the eyes from nature. Aren't they lovely?

And don't you love languages?!
For many years the only foreign language I knew was French, learned in the schoolroom and then re-learned on frequent cross-Channel visits to Calais, Dieppe and onwards to Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, where we had friends with an ancient five-storey hotel smack bang in the centre. We could park the car for the weekend and walk everywhere, buying a chicken in the market to eat on the white sand beach, and drinking enough not to mind the ancient French beds.

Now half our lives our lived in Spanish, and the OH needed my translation services at the dentist this week.
"What do you want me to say?" I asked him.
"Tell the dentist my gums feel tingly- I think I have an infection."
I can say "hurt" or "itch" - but "tingle"?
So I looked it up.
"Siento hormigueo". That looked familiar. I know "Siento" means "I feel" and "hormiga" means "ant". So "Siento hormigueo" must mean "I feel antsy". That makes a kind of sense. Sorted!

5 comments:

  1. Antsy! I love it. Languages are fascinating, aren't they. I wish I'd taken Latin at school now. Everyone took French and then we had a choice between Latin and German and I chose German thinking it would be more useful. I was wrong.

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  2. Lovely flowers and just cos we don't comment doesn't mean we don't read :-) xx

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  3. Ros -the only Latin I learned was from Pa when he explained the meaning of a word and its derivation, but it was enough to stick and help me understand new words. German is horrid to my ears. And Debs - thankyou! xx

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  4. A bit of fun & a bit of reality.
    Keep on blogging Liz.

    My Spanish is better than my school days French but neither are much good. I have enough Spanish to live half my life in Tenerife but talking effectively to Spanish Doctors or Dentists is a definite no.

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  5. Maurice - I had no choice but to learn to talk to doctors - I had an operation 18months after arriving here!

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