Trip to Mallorca
Hello to all my SD friends! Just wanted to follow up (and brag a little) on our trip to Mallorca in Spain. By the way, thank you to all who gave me tips and suggestions when I posted before going.
We stayed in the north, a little place called Puerta de Pollensa. It was right on the beach, and there was a fairly good sized port and marina there. There were a lot of tourists there, but it didn't feel "touristy." There were as many Spanish tourists as from other countries, which was a good sign.
Now the fun stuff. One of the reasons we chose Spain was that my wife of course knows I've been learning Spanish, so she wanted to get me to a Spanish speaking country. Since we were already going to be in Scotland to visit her family, Spain was the obvious choice. (Bless her, she'd prefer Italy, but she did this for me.)
While most people there spoke English to varying levels (from hardly any to fluent), they preferred, and appreciated it, when I spoke Spanish. Some have said that people there and in Catalunya prefer to speak Catalan (or in Mallorca, a dialect of Catalan called Mallorqín), I did not find that to be the case at all. When I spoke Spanish, everyone responded in Spanish with no hesitation. Also, there are many workers in the bars and restaurants who were from different parts of Spain, so not everyone even spoke Mallorquin.
I felt very comfortable, in fact pretty proud, of my ability to get my point across. I even successfully avoided a parking ticket by speaking with the traffic warden in Soller!! Naturally, understanding what people said to me was more difficult. I had to ask people quite often to repeat more slowly, or the meaning of a word or phrase, but that really didn't present any problem. More importantly, they did not try to revert to English for my sake - they would try to explain or rephrase in Spanish.
My wife told me towards the end of the week that when other tourists tried to speak Spanish, she noticed the waiters and waitresses would sometimes have a look or a smile like they were trying to be patient with these "foreigners." However, when I spoke with them, they had no such look, and they would proceed to respond normally in Spanish. They were also surprised when they found out I had learned through an audio course.
In short it was an altogether very rewarding trip, linguistically speaking, thanks in no small part to everyone on this site. This is a great web site. Thank you all!!!
Winkfish
1 Answer
Humpfh!! ¡Me has hecno completemente celosa y envidiosa! ¿No tienes ninguna idea de cómo me comporto hacia una persona que me ha hecho celosa?
