7 - Language barriers

It is a well documented fact that the typical British holidaygoer will not learn the slightest jot of whatever language would be relevant to their holiday destination (in our case Spain...obviously...come come now, keep up) instead relying on the stalwart old technique of repeating everything in English over and over again...just getting louder, slower and using progressively sweeping hand gestures as you go on...*obviously* the poor native on the recieving end of this cruel and unusual treatment will suddenly understand what you mean if you do this...well, either that or they'll just tell you what time it is and scurry away with a terrified expression on their face :)

I, of course, don't do this...I prefer the 'blank yet polite incomprehension' look for when they're talking to me and simply resort to pointing at things if I need something ;) Now normally when you go on holiday there'll be a few natives who speak English...but not if, like us, you go to a resort for Spanish people where no-one speaks a word of English...aha! But wait! We had a secret linguistic weapon up our sneaky sleeves...one of the group could speak fluent Spanish...Huzzah! Problem solved yes?...well, no actually since she wasn't all too keen on being the translator for the entire holiday (perfectly understandable)...so what did we do? Well fortunately for us one of our number was utterly unfazed by mere trifling details like 'having no grasp of Spanish whatsoever' and was more than keen to ask any passing Spaniard anything we wanted to know! Armed only with boundless enthusiasm, absolutely no fear whatsoever and her own special brand of Spanish (which consisted of the few Spanish words she did know mixed in with English...but English spoken with a silly accent and the letter 'o' after things...practically indistinguishable from the real thing non?) she was perfectly happy to quiz the confused locals on any conceiveable subject...sometimes even when it wasn't necessary! Now that, my friends, is true dedication in the field of International brotherhood! ;)