I'm gradually getting to grips with Spanish, but I have a vocabulary issue. I have no problem with conjugating verbs, which is a common stumbling block for many English speakers learning Spanish. I studied Latin at school, and at the time I never thought it would come in useful, but the principle of conjugating verbs which is also present in Latin helped enormously in the early days.
My problem is in remembering Spanish words that are totally different from their English, French or Italian equivalents. When I announced my intention to learn Spanish, one particular friend - who has delusions of adequacy in the banter department - told me all you had to do to learn Spanish was stick an 'o' on the end of any English word and say it with confidence. While it does actually work that way for some words - telephone and telefono comes immediately to mind - it's not always the case.
I'm getting better now, but in the early days, it was a real problem. We went to a Spanish restaurant, and my husband Tony wanted butter with his bread. I tried telling him that the Spanish don't do butter, except in cooking, but he's old and set in his ways, and he was having none of it. The waiter didn't speak any English at all, and I had yet to start on serious Spanish gathering, but I was confident I could manage that.
I called the waiter over - and then wondered what on Earth was the Spanish word for 'butter.' I'd only done the weekly supermarket trawl the day before, and it had registered that 'mantequilla' didn't sound very much like butter at all, but in the heat of the moment, I couldn't pull the word out of my wine-washed brain. I'm pretty fluent in French, and I remembered that many Spanish words are similar to French, but with an 'o' rather than an 'e' at the end - something of a variation on our friend's theme.
It was as if a light bulb flashed on in my brain. Butter is 'beurre' in French, so maybe it's 'burro' in Spanish. Haltingly, I asked the waiter for 'burro con pan' - 'butter with the bread,' or so I thought. He gave me a very funny look, and rushed off to fetch the restaurant owner, who - not unreasonably - wanted to know why I wanted to eat donkey meat with my bread! Luckily, his English was far superior to my Spanish, and when it was all explained, everyone had a good laugh.
We still use that restaurant, and whenever the owner sees us he pipes up, 'Quieres burro con pan, senora?' Thinking about it, maybe I foresaw the horsemeat scandal five years ago. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!
