IAN & SPAIN

I’ve been in Spain for quite some time now and there has always been an area of language that has always caused me problems, and that is fish. I have real difficulty sometimes translating the names of fish. The funny thing is my knowledge of fish and seafood before I came to Spain was already pretty limited and when I say limited I mean at most I had eaten Cod, Haddock, Lemon Sole, Trout and Plaice maybe a few others and my seafood was limited to Scampi, Mussels and Prawn, so my fish vocab was not extensive. 

We were never big fish eaters in my family so when I came to Spain it wasn’t really high on the agenda of things to learn. However over the years I have come to love many varieties of seafood and fish, the majority of which I have discovered here in Spain and consequently learnt the Spanish name first, it wasn’t until a relative came to visit and asked what we were eating that I even thought about the English translation and that happened so rarely that the English names never really sunk in and I still get confused to this day with a few. 

Now, I’m not sure if this is something unique to me but just in case other readers are having difficulty with fish and seafood names, I decided to repost a list of the most common varieties which I put together a while back, which you will come across in Spain quite frequently along with their English equivalent, hope you find it useful!  

I could have done with it a long time ago!! 

                         FISH   

                    SEAFOOD