So the other night one of our good Honduran friends who has a great job in the mine that influences our town asked us if we`d like to go up to the miner`s club with him and meet the new boss. Our mine is owned and operated by a Canadian company, and the majority of the managers are Canadian, Brazilian, Argentinian and a number of other nationalities. The new man in charge is Canadian, therefore speaks French and English. We got there and went around the table to introduce ourselves as the local volunteers.
He preferred English or French.
His wife spoke French and a
little Spanish.
Our friend speaks Spanish and a
little English.
We speak English and Spanish.
Their son spoke French, but
understood English.
The waiter spoke all three.
It was headache, all around.
I had a strategy to speak in spanish with his wife, because some of the words are similar to french and she was learning spanish. It didnt work so well, though. English was out of the question. So, we had an enlightening talk about motorcycles using broken sentences of all three languages combined with sound effects and hand motions. It was too funny. At one point, she didnt know a word in english and I didnt know it in french, but we both luckily knew it in spanish: Harley Davidson (with a spanish accent). I couldn´t make this up.
I told her, well, motioned to her, that my grandparents are avid Harley drivers. She just loved it! For years, her and her husband have driven Harleys, but when they trasferred here from India, they had to give it up because its too dangerous to ride in central america. The rest of the night we smiled at each other and every now and then she would make the motion of riding and say ¨Vroom Vroooooommm!¨ meaning that she missed it so much.
It was quite possibly one of the most confusing yet rewarding conversations I have ever had. About motorcycles, anyway.
Crystal
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