LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

Allow me a personal note today. It is July, which for me is also a cruel month, mingling memory with the few remains of desire. It marks the departure of Laura, the bird who flies each year from San Francisco, perches in my soul, and sings sweet tunes that cheer my tired brain. Though I know the journey demands an effort, she unfailingly brings us joy and leaves us smiling. Now she returns to her school, to the pupils she loves, and to the hard work of being an example worth following. Godspeed, Laura. We shall be waiting for your yearly flight back, whose warmth lingers long after your wings have disappeared from sight.

It's my lucky day today. I have killed two birds with one stone and have added two phrases to my dictionary. I did not know that those people who spy on us behind the curtains of their windows are curtain twitchers . I knew of them but ignored they had a label. I then discovered that those who snoop behind "visillos" in Spain are viejas del visillo . Fancy that. Now I know that when walking down a lonely street and I feel two eyes on me, peeking behind a curtain, there's a curtain twitcher or viejo de los visillos spying. Then I will stop, look up, and give them the finger! (A tip of the hat to my daughter Laura Lynn for providing the information she gathered at a hen party in Madrid.)  

Native speakers seldom use personal pronouns, except for emphasis: Canto en la ducha instead of yo canto en la ducha , as the ending -o means yo . Thus it is essential to memorize the tenses without the pronouns Cant o en la ducha : I sing in the shower Com emos en un restaurante : We eat at a restaurant Viv e en Hong Kong : She/he lives in Hong Kong  (From Laura Carbonell´s Spanish Grammar Cheat-sheet , Editatum, 2021)

Surfing two languages is a dangerous sport, riddled with perils and pitfalls that affect even the best. My daughter Laura, who makes her home in San Francisco, is one of the few true-blue bilingual people I know.  Yesterday and while she was talking in Spanish to a monolinguist I overheard her saying: "... y dimos una fiesta de calentamiento de casa..." which I took as a quick, speedy translation of "a house-warming party." The problem here is cultural, not truly linguistic. People in Spain move into a new home and they do not throw a party to celebrate or warm it up. So, did the Spaniard understand what kind of a "fiesta" that was? This is why I insist on the problem of culture and habits and customs... and not only on grammar and vocabulary.