A Guiri Learning Spanish (Part 1)

What is an idiom?

Ask a student, and they will be betrayed by this false friend of a word. It sounds like idioma, the Spanish word for ‘language’, and so they’ll say that. But it’s not that at all. In fact, it is language that has been knocked around by the slings and arrows of life, a word or phrase that has been, by serendipity, pushed into a line of evolution that promises immortality. A fixed expression. An idiom is that glorious thing that permeates a culture, inhabits a society. It’s the linguistic equivalent of a monkey using tools for the first time, it’s the thing that made it while other utterances evolved into archaic dead ends or settled into functional daily usage.

Students enjoy idioms for the most part. They are visual and visceral, especially when compared to confusing phrasal verbs, verbs that heave with different meanings depending on what prepositions they carry. Like midges, prepositions are tiny, numerous and annoying.

Far out phrases

It’s raining cats and dogs. Under the weather. Bury the hatchet. These are all English ones. There’s one in Spanish – ¡mucha mierda! – which translates literally as ‘lots of shit!’ Their version of ‘break a leg’ before a theatre performance. Idioms are also bridges to different perspectives, as various cultures say the same thing but with alterations and local flavour. In this particular instance, wishing a cornucopia of excrement to a nervous writer or actor before a show comes from an era when the rich patrons of the theatre arrived in horse and carriage. While the wealthy citizen enjoyed the performances, the horses left outside would do their business through all three acts before ferrying their owners home. Hence, if animals left a lot of dung, a big crowd had been at the play.

Speaking of horses, now picture Lord Horatio Nelson aboard his ship. He is leading an attack in the Battle of Copenhagen with another British ship and captain, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker. Parker wants to retreat and signals to Nelson to do the same. Nelson observes Parker’s ship through his telescope and blind eye, intentionally ignoring the entreaties of his counterpart. He prefers to attack.

Now imagine India in 1600 BCE. Devotees are hurling balls of butter at Hindu statues, hoping to gain the favour of the gods. These gods might bestow general luck upon the butter-thrower or respond to their specific petition.

Nowadays, we all use and ‘turn a blind eye’ and ‘butter someone up’, and we’re often oblivious to their original meanings. And as rich and intriguing as these phrases are, they also have another advantage: their meaning is pretty much universally agreed upon. Not so much in Spanish.

You hope a lot of horses go to the theatre. Photo by Vlah Dumitru at Unsplash.

Spanish Idioms

I don’t know why the meaning of Spanish idioms is contested. Is it because I teach the old and the young, men and women, northerners and southerners? Or have all my students made a secret pact to make fun of me?

It usually goes like this. I explain an expression, and then one of them will perk up. ‘Oh, we say that like this!’ Cue the Spanish version. Happy with my new term, I try to use it with another class, eager to show to expressive and articulate I am in a second language. I hope I can surprise them, that they listen in awe as I reel it off. It’d be like when a foreigner quotes Fr. Ted and an Irish person becomes speechless and appreciative. No, events transpire in an unexpected way. Instead of reverie, cue blank faces. ‘No, no, we don’t say that. That doesn’t exist’.   

The worst part is that it cast aspersions on you and your abilities in Spanish. Did someone tell this guiri a weird expression or did he just pick it up wrong, with his weird brain, that sponge that is not big enough to absorb more than one language? The irony is that the most contact you’ll have with the locals is invariably through classes, and its simultaneously the worst time to show-off your castellano skills. When you are focused so much on the nuts and bolts of grammar and clauses, a sudden foray into Spanish probably won’t go well. You’ll do yourself a disservice and they’ll come away with the wrong impression.

Some people are natural linguists. They slip between languages without even realising it. Watch a foreign movie or show on Netflix and you’ll note how the characters will intersperse their dialogue with English words and phrases. To a certain extent, it’s trendiness, something cool. Though like with anything that is knowingly cool, it’s actually a bit cringey, and that’s particularly the case when blue sky thinkers in corporate offices reach for English terms to bolster their bullshit patter. But it’s also testament to how comfortable they are with linguistics in general, and a reflection of how popular culture surrounds them. Even the most monolingual of Spaniards will hear snatches of Springsteen on the radio and Brummie slang as they are glued to the Spanish subtitles of each episode of Peaky Blinders. 

I’m not like that.

Photo by Sigmund at Unsplash.

Netflix monks

The Council of Europe has handily categorized each level of English, from the A1 of beginner to the C2 of proficiency. In my case, I don’t slip easily between languages. Rather, I slip between levels. I am normally a C1, or an advanced speaker, stronger in listening and speaking than I am in writing. But put me in front of a new person or on stage at a book launch, and nerves dig their hooks into my tongue and drag my level down. Within the space of minutes, I am oscillating between the peaks of articulacy and babbling throughs. Nothing demonstrates that more than with my last three interactions with my local pharmacist. The first time I met her, she congratulated me on my Spanish. The second time, she furrowed her brow and shrugged her shoulders in incomprehension. Most recently, she said, ‘Hey, you’ve improved a lot!’

The Netflix Principle (something I have just made up) could be a useful barometer of how well you are integrating. For a lot of English-speaking foreigners in Spain, there could be another civil war and most would be oblivious. Bullets would fly as they check football results in The Guardian or watch something in their native language on a streaming platform. It’s alarmingly easy to drift and consume the familiar, and once you realise you’ve been doing it for the best part of a decade, the pangs of embarrassment and shame set in. That’s why an effort needs to be made. For a student of Spanish, just one article and podcast a day isn’t much of a commitment, but it is beneficial and ultimately rewarding. It results in integration, language dominance and the avoidance of turning into that weird guiri who spends all their time in Irish bars, floating through the country.

That’s not to say it can’t be lonely. One abiding memory I have of sharing an apartment with one Irish guy was of him hunched over a flimsy table on a Friday or a Saturday night, illuminated by the pale bulb of an IKEA lamp. Too poor to go out, he’d pore over Spanish lessons like an ascetic monk, keeping himself busy and investing in an unpromised, unknown future.

There is a pressure around learning the language. Firstly, you are very conscious that English-speakers don’t have the best reputation for multilingualism, and secondly, the comments from bus drivers and shop assistants never left it in doubt. In my early years, struggling with asking for directions or an item were met with a terse, tough-but-fair comment: ‘You need to learn Spanish.’ And I recall the time a waitress asked me for the time, and when I gave it in broken, halting Spanish, she corrected me like a frustrated mother would do with a lazy son.

Turning a corner

Dont worry, it gets better. Part 2 of this will show the many postive and beautiful things that come from learning Spanish.

In the meantime, check out more culture on our podcast or through our many books.

Photo by Jon Tyson at Unspalsh.