Como se dice....

My friends and I often joke about how we can no longer speak English. We struggle for basic words, our search for "humanitarian" results in "humanoidistic", "knife" becomes "tool use cut sandwich sharp" and so on. It's not that our Arabic has become phenomenal, or that I have taken to expressing myself in Egyptian poetry rather than bother with English prose. Quite the contrary, my Arabic is only plateauing while my English descends, placing me smack in the middle of linguistic no-man's-land. Instead of being content with this battlefront, today I decided to enter a new theatre of non-communication. I was happily doggy-paddling in the pool at the Intercontinental hotel-were I am a gym member with access to the pool--when a plump spanish woman smiles between her water treading to ask me something I can't understand. I pause doggy-paddling to kick myself for having fogotten all my Spanish. I studied it for 5 years, went to both Spain and Mexico, and had acheived a sort of fluency before I decided to study Arabic and throw all my subjunctive and imperfect expertise out the window. Here I was, staring dumbfounded at a very nice Spanish woman, and all I can mutter is "Perdon. No Entiendo. She smiled, and we proceeded to chat as best we could, which went something like this. "I study (ARABIC WORD) for time in (ARABIC WORD) Spain." -oh thats great, where did you study? Madrid? " I (ARABIC WORD) study (ARABIC WORD) near by Madrid. -oh me! why we live right near Madrid also, Alcala de Heneras did you say? oh goodness! My husband works there...sweetie! oh mi carino! Come speak to this nice little girl who doesn't speak a word of spanish but is funny to talk to. So now walks over her nice husband, who is very patient, and who thinks its funny that I clearly an struggling to spit out the deeply hidden spanish. It turns out that when he is speaking, I understand 95 percent of what he is saying, and I am excited by this. I try to blurt out answers to questions that I now understand, but am met only with language obstacles. When asked if I find the arabic language to be difficult, I answer... "Yes. The Arabic Language is -how the hell do you say difficult in spanish?? sa'ab?? no no that's arabic..okay, deep breaths...how do you say difficult in english-uh, difficult, okay, spanish is close to english, difficult is....dificil!!!!" How do you say "different?!?!?"...ah, diferente!! "Hotel?!?!?!...ah, hotel!!" And so on and so forth. I didn't remember how to say "week" until I was back in the locker room, and just a few moments ago I recalled how to say "the same". I believe I am going to create a new language called Sparabish, where anything goes, and you actually can also communicate with grunts and theigh slaps if the word escapes you in all three languages. Perhaps this will force upon us a new convivencia, where peoples of different cultures and religions understand one another, and are brought together by a good game of charades. Sparabish also gives my linguistic incompetence the sort of legitimacy which comes with a title. I believe my crowning moment of idiocy was in our discussion about Thai food, when my attempted "tengo miedo" over spicy food turned into "tengo mierda" over spicy food. If you don't know spanish, learn it. Laughing at Pauline's mistake will be well worth the effort.