Spending time with Hernan gives great insight into what a capricious bitch the English language is. His English is excellent. But still he gets tripped up by the language’s lack of logic and consistency.
“Miss” and “lose” are particularly troubling. Hernan can’t get his head around why it’s “miss the bus” and not “lose the bus.” I try to explain but eventually resort to “It just is.”
We also get amusement when he tries to translate a menu item and it comes out “rolling chicken.” I start stabbing the table with my fork, trying to spear the tumbling entree, which really is “rolled chicken.”
Hernan speaks English, Spanish and Quechua fluently, and my presence gives him a chance to learn new words and ask about meanings. It works both ways. My Spanish has always been piss-poor, but I’ve been taking this opportunity to exercise it, sometimes with horrible results. Once the conversation drifts past three-word phrases in present tense, I’m in trouble, as bartender Marcello found out when he tried to talk to me about futbol. When it was all said and done, I tipped him profusely, mostly out of guilt for the way I had just savaged his language.
A few other interesting linguistic gymnatics …
— “Sing, you bastards.” The phrase on the back of Hernan’s baseball cap, which he hadn’t noticed when he purchased it at Cuzco second-hand store. It’s a Rodney Carrington cap, and Hernan clearly had no idea who the U.S. comedian is. He just liked the color (blue) and the RC on the front.
— “El hogalito.” Wes’s attempt to describe the young wild hogs he hunts in Texas.
— “Condor delicioso.” We ate a lot of chicken during our trip, and Hernan took to referring to it as “condor.” After we returned to Lima, I extended the joke, telling our guide how much we enjoyed eating condor during our trip to the Sacred Valley. She looked perplexed, a little concerned. Then she assumed that maybe I was just mangling Spanish … so she pushed. “You mean you saw a condor?” “No, we ate them,” I finally said of the endangered birds in English, and as a look of horror came over her face, I let her in on the joke.