Tweedledum and Tweedledee
If I had to sum up the weekend, I’d say it’s been a successful one for speaking Catalan. Most people are kind of bemused as to why I’m learning a language that’s only spoken by a small number of people in a small part of the world. But hey, I enjoy it, and it’s only polite to make an effort. So, personal successes in speaking Catalan this weekend included:
- Actually understanding a joke on APM without having to ask what some of the words meant.
- Being invited to spend a future weekend in the country house of a Catalan family, at least in part because of my ability to string a few words together in their language. If I’d have known that being invited to Cadaqués was a possible side effect of learning Catalan, I would have paid a lot more attention in class last year.
- I managed to maintain a conversation with the old ladies who live on the fifth floor.
The latter might not sound like much, but it is a very real achievement. They live nearly at the top of the building, and are possibly as old as time itself. They have lived through the entirety of Franco’s dictatorship, and the civil war that preceded it. I like to imagine they are as old as theflat they live in. Of all the people who live in the flat they are the ones I most frequently bump into, as the sheer amount of time it takes them to walk up and down the stairs increases the possibility of bumping into them significantly. (Thankfully the Man Who Lives Upstairs is a rarely sighted creature, although sadly the mantra chanting Argentinian man and his wife don’t often venture down from their flat on the roof.)
They are always spotted together, and are almost identical. Imagine tweedledum and tweedledee in ancient Catalan form, and there you have it. Just as they are always together, so it is that they must also talk at the same time. I am normally left smiling and nodding while I play spot the difference between the two.
But! This weekend we managed a coherent exchange. I’ll spare you the details, as it wasn’t the content that was important, rather the fact we managed to communicate in some way. Who knows, perhaps by the end of the year we will be on first name terms…
Barcelona Ramblings 