Cristina

While visiting with my sister and her family in Mallorca Spain, I had the pleasure of "babysitting" my 8 year old grand niece Cristina one day when she was home from school with an illness and all other family member were at work. She is the daughter of my nephew John. Her grandmother, my sister, has spoken to her in English since she was born and she fully understands, but in school she speaks Catalan and Spanish and at home Mallorqui, a local dialect. Whew! And to think that MOST Americans speak only english, unless you are from Texas. Who knows what they speak! I digress.
Cristina will be attending a family wedding in the states this year and her grandmother told her she had a perfect opportunity to practice her english with me while I was visiting. So this particular day when she was sick and in my care, we make some stabs at conversation. Cristina, I ask, would you like something? Yes she answers enthusiastically! Okay, what would you like, is my reply. Idonknow, she answers. I smile, certain she thinks this is one word! Later in the week she has a good laugh when I attempt to say perro (dog) which involves a considerable amount of rolling of the r's . This is, of course, something we are not acquainted with in our language and our tongues just can't easily and smoothly complete the task. Well at least mine can't. Cristina decides she'll teach me how to roll my r's and has a good laugh at each poor attempt I make. Okay having exhausted that comedy, I decide to turn the conversation toward the "th" sound, which is foreign to many languages, including spanish, and even some speaking the so called "queen's english"! I ask Cristina to say, thanks, those, these, three and Will Smith. Of course she makes an excellent attempt and really does a good job.
It's curious to think that when we have travelled the world we have automatically assumed that others would speak and understand english. In most parts of europe that is true, well old europe that is. The new europe, the former soviet bloc countries are just now teaching their young people to speak english. In Turkmenistan our landlady spoke no english at all, although she spoke russian. I had a russian/english dictionary and each morning we would sit and have a "conversation" using the dictionary. It was very interesting and she thoroughly enjoyed it...as did I.