3 October 2005

McDonalds Spanglish

With the self-assurance that comes from having listened to Spanish lessons in mp3 files on my phone for 10 minutes a day last week, and having spent a whole day in Barcelona without being lost, pick-pocketed or kidnapped, I sauntered into El McDonaldos and confidently asked for "uno hamburguese ab fromatge por favor". The accent was impeccable, the prounciation perfect, even if I do say so myself—I sounded exactly like an Anglo-Australian tourist mumbling in broken Spanish. It was now that I remembered the problem with learning foreign languages, when the customer service officer replied in a barrage of rapid Spanish, none of which I recognised. Unperturbed and with great self-assurance, I replied, as one does, "Huh?".

I think it's back to those Spanish mp3s for me!
Go to eebahgum!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just a quick comment, I believe you just mixed some French into that Spanish, since, as I take my 5th year of Spanish, I must say that the way I would have said "Uno hamburguese ab framatge por favor" Would have been "Una hamburguesa con queso, por favor"
Framage is definitely a french word (I know from my mom, who took French), and that ab looks very French as well, and isnt Spanish. If you can stay in Barcelona for a long time, then Im studying abroad there next spring ^_^

Anonymous said...

LOL... you mixed Spanish not with French but with Catalan, the other official language in Catalonian region, where Barcelona is placed. It's a language similar to Spanish and French, like in was in the middle. I live the same now, but in the opposite way, because I'm living in Virginia, lol.