Last night I was walking up Fuencarral Street, making my way home after a casual walk and a bite to eat and. Of course, as I do this I like to keep my eyes, nose and ears open to take in everything I can. So, there I was crossing the street when I heard one college-looking American asking another, “Now, how do you say ‘thank you’ in Spanish?”
I will commend the young man on his intellectual curiosity and I can assure you he will go to bed satisfied he has learned something new that day, as long as he doesn’t get too drunk to remember the word in the morning, but I gotta tell ya, I was taken aback because I like to think there are certain foreign words that are so universal they enter the basic database package of any American. I mean this isn’t even the premium pay version common knowledge. Everyone seems to know how to say that, especially when you come from a country where Spanish is the second language and spoken by some 40 million people (yes, that’s nearly the population ofSpain) and it is by far the most studied language by Americans. But that’s because for some reason we think Spanish is easier to learn than other languages…yeah, right! I’ll tell you about that some other day.
But maybe I am wrong. Maybe it’s a start for this man. Maybe he’ll end up writing books in Spanish one day. He’s just off to a slow start.
By the way, you say, “gracias”. Just in case!
