No sé nada

Long,long ago (well, July) I vowed never again to be embarrassed about my almost complete lack of language skills. I went through a process of elimination to decide which language I should learn. I studied Latin briefly at school but as Centurions never quite made it to these parts and I didn't want to be a flower arranger or human butcher there was never really a need. I then migrated to French which annoyingly I can read pretty well though have no desire to know perhaps partly from the knowledge that in the last 200 or so years the only words the French themselves needed to know were Non! and Je me rends. So Spanish was chosen for my adult re-education. I dug out the cloth eared Collins Gem Spanish phrasebook I bought a couple of years before and started to read up on it, check pronunciation, download the few available podcasts etc.. One of them mentioned a speed learning technique that tapped into the sub-conscious (which suits me as I usually am) and just seemed to make sense. As you learn buy a novel in Spanish that is also available in English, and just read. Vocabulary, grammar, speech patterns etc. are, according to the theory, just absorbed and constructed jigsaw-like by the grey, walnut sized organ that sits between the ears. My walnut read lazy learning. So, before boarding my holiday jet home I procured my first pair of Spanglish novels. At this point I should, therefore, be able to regale you with word of what progress I've made and share whether I can converse in a way that would have you think I'm Enrique rather than a dubbed bandito in a Fistfull of Dollars. Needless to say I lost the bloody book. Well, you weren't expecting a happy ending, were you? ¡Bastardos groseros!