by Charlie Geer
Because my presentation concerned the challenges of teaching a second language, what happened shortly before it, at lunch, was only fitting. My host, a professor of linguistics at the University of Jaén, spoke much better English than I did Spanish, and had kindly set about explaining the finer points of the menu to me:
“So there is shrimp with lemon,” she said. “Oh, and they have the eggs of the sheep. We eat some things that might seem strange to you.”
Indeed. I remembered from high-school textbooks that Spanish sheep talk differently than American sheep—they say “bay,” not “bah”—but I had not heard anything about them laying eggs. The Spanish are remarkably resourceful when it comes to livestock…maybe they made a dish of ovine ova? As impossible as that sounded, it seemed a shade more likely than a mammal popping out an egg.
“Like caviar, sort of?” I said.
“No, no. Like eggs.”
I could not be sure Maria had the word she wanted. Certainly some of my Freshman Comp students back home, native speakers all, confused things from time to time.
Roderigo puts Desdemona on a pedal stool, as an example.
“Eggs?” I said. “Like huevos?”
“Yes. Huevos. Yes?”
“Huevos of the sheep. Eggs of the sheep.”
“Huevos,” Maria said. Exasperated, she then dispensed with spoken language entirely: Cupping her hands and bobbing them, she made a simian sort of gesture that, though not commonly employed in academic circles, translates easily.
“Balls!” I said. “Of course. Huevos. Balls. Sheep balls.”
Pleased to have finally gotten it, I looked to Maria for the next lesson à la carte.
But now Maria was not getting something. “Balls?” she said. “Like balones?”
Inasmuch as a balón is an inflated piece of sports equipment, it’s possible Maria was wondering if sheep in the United States play football—which would confirm the notion that American football is not just oddly named, but downright odd.
“You know, balls,” I said and made the universal sign.
“Ah—balls,” she said. “Yes, yes, of course. Like huevos. Balls.”
“Like balls. Huevos.”
“Yes.”
So there we had it, a small but useful lesson in linguistics: When the figurative waltzes across languages, the literal is bound to cut in. A question I had meant to ask Maria, as to whether students in Spain are as cavalier with the word “como” as American students are with the word “like,” was best put off. For now we agreed that academics might spend less time in books and more time on streets, and then settled in for lunch.
I had the shrimp.
