Overcoming language barriers of marriage and travel takes work

<p>Mary Ellen and I are planning a vacation to South America this fall and we decided we both should learn a little Spanish. I ordered a language course on CDs, but I was having serious problems memorizing the vocabulary.</p><p>I came up with an idea. While my wife was shopping, I got a stack of sticky notes and labeled everything in the house, like the chair (la silla), the table (la mesa), the door (la puerta) and the mirror (el espejo). In Spanish, nouns are identified as masculine or feminine. This really confounded me in high school and accounted for my low grades. The teacher told me I had some gender confusion, which was the last thing I needed to hear right before I asked Darla to be my date for the senior prom.</p><p>When Mary Ellen got home and saw all the notes, she wasn’t happy, but she wasn’t as ticked off as our cat (el gato) Angel, who kept walking in circles because of the sticky note on her tail. Angel was also unhappy to learn that “el gato” is a masculine noun. I told Angel I wished there was a neuter pronoun for cat, but that just brought back a lot of bad memories for her.</p><p>I stuck a yellow note on Mary Ellen’s back that said “la esposa” (wife). She apparently didn’t think that was funny because the next morning in church, I realized I had been walking around with “el estupido” written on my back, which requires no translation. But it does explain the hug she gave me right before we got in the car.</p><p>Breakfast is the time of day when we compete with each other to see who is making the most progress in our vocabulary-building. The problem is that we are using different learning apps and programs. It’s like when we took dancing lessons and we each had our own teacher. We were dynamite with our own instructors, but dreadful together.</p><p>We study our lessons every evening, and every morning we attempt to outdo each other…</p><p>Mary Ellen: Buenos días, Ricardo.</p><p>Dick: Buenos días, Mary Ellen.</p><p>This is our typical good start, but I realized Mary Ellen was only memorizing expressions that had practical value for her on the trip, like, “Ricardo, quiero ir a una tienda con ropa exclusiva.” I later found out this meant: “I want to go shopping at an exclusive clothing store.”</p><p>The only retort I could come up with quickly was using words I learned the previous night: Mi elefante tiene dos hermanas. (My elephant has two sisters.) I think Mary Ellen will have a better chance to employ her language skills than I will.</p><p>Mary Ellen and I have actually been having a lot of fun learning a new language and chatting to each other in Spanish. However, we do have one concern. In a happy marriage like ours, the phrase “And what exactly is that supposed to mean?” should not be uttered in every conversation.</p><p><em>Television personality Dick Wolfsie writes this weekly column for the Daily</em> <em>Journal. Send comments to</em> <em>dr-editorialgreen fieldreporter.com.</em></p>