spanish epitome of incomprehensibility Arden is livelier with nine people in the house: in addition to the four of us already here, my cousin Julia came this evening with her two kids, husband, and her husband's martial arts instructor (which sounds odd when described like that, but he's also a friend of the family). Anway, the whole family speaks Spanish, because Rafa (Julia's husband) is from Colombia. Jose (the martial arts guy) is too, and doesn't speak much English. Learned while walking around the garden and then the block: sunflower - girasol (pronounced hira-sol, meaning it turns towards the sun; French "tournesol" follows the same logic) raspberry - frambuesa (cognate with French framboise) molino - mill (again, like French moulin) Moral of the story: if Spanish consisted of isolated nouns spoken slowly, I could probably understand a lot of it! Things I recognized, or sort of: casa - house y también - and also (I thought this meant "you too" before I looked it up) And then I said on our walk around the block, pointing out the library: "Esta la biblioteca!" Yes, but you're leaving out the verb, Rafa said. Esta es la biblioteca. ...so I'm still a ways away from becoming a hyper polyglot gigachad, as the surreal comedy channel Language_Simp puts it (okay, but the guy behind it really does speak several languages). 220819 ... raze i taught myself a few phrases when she was learning the language or pretending to memorize its music while counting down the minutes until the next time she could make herself honest for a little while. "buenas noches," i would say. "duerme bien y dulces suenos." she would just say, "goodnight." once, i said, "estoy tomando la pildora." because night_is_alive_with_the_folly_of_men. "me too," she said. and she laughed. i probably know more spanish than she does now. and i know almost nothing. 220820 what's it to you? who go blather from