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  1. WGroleau

    Is it OK to write emails in English when booking accommodation?

    My friend Barbara always used another name in Spanish-speaking areas. ¡Qué linda! is so much better than ¡Qué bárbara! :-)
  2. WGroleau

    Spanish late-night eating culture

    I had a second-floor piso on a block with lots of bars and restaurants. The noise at midnight was not appreciated, but at one o’clock, there was silence.
  3. WGroleau

    Is it OK to write emails in English when booking accommodation?

    We hosted so many Korean pilgrims who could speak neither Spanish nor English that I prepared a two-column list of hospitalero sentences for the pilgrims or the other hospitaleros to point to. We always had staff who could get by in French, German, Dutch, English, Italian. Once we had a...
  4. WGroleau

    Is it OK to write emails in English when booking accommodation?

    When doing so, it might be wise to reveal that it is from an auto-translator. Google is one of the better ones, but none of them can be trusted for anything important. They are getting good enough that sometimes the grammar is good enough to not give them away. But I have seen Google reverse...
  5. WGroleau

    What is the best app to learn some Spanish for the Camino? Thanks

    Definitely! I spoke Mexican Spanish for years and got an A in a third-year college class on the phonetic differences of different dialects, but still had trouble understanding people in Spain for the first few months.
  6. WGroleau

    Can you pass this Spanish naturalization quiz?

    Like I said, many folks claimed that, but the immigration lawyer said it isn't true.
  7. WGroleau

    What is the best app to learn some Spanish for the Camino? Thanks

    HB 2.0
  8. WGroleau

    Can you pass this Spanish naturalization quiz?

    If you mean "a year in Puerto Rico and then two years in Spain” … Puerto Rico is a “former Ibero-American colony” for the purposes of Spain’s two-year residency expection to the over-all residency requirement for citizenship. If you live there for a year and have the required evidence of doing...
  9. WGroleau

    Can you pass this Spanish naturalization quiz?

    Oh, in that case, I get 16/25 instead of 15. :)
  10. WGroleau

    Can you pass this Spanish naturalization quiz?

    If you have USA citizenship, you sign or say that you renounce it, but that means nothing, and Spain knows that. To do it for real, you fill out some State Department paperwork, pay a rather hefty "exit fee," AND get a certification from IRS that you do not owe any taxes. But there are some...
  11. WGroleau

    Learning Spanish while walking the Camino

    As a former Spanish teacher, I would LOVE to give a person or couple “on the trail training”! Currently, I can’t, but obviously I’m not the only person who can teach AND likes walking. Maybe if we mention the idea to any teachers/schools, some of them will take on other routes.
  12. WGroleau

    How the Camino Helps Villages/Towns Survive

    I was goig north from the Francés near Iguzquisa and encountered a seemingly grumpy fellow who said sternly (in Spanish) “¡I’ve never seen you before; you’re not from around here!” But when I answered in Spanish, he transformed into a very friendly fellow. Most of the villages I visited (many)...
  13. WGroleau

    How many pilgrims walked Camino de Santiago in the Middle Ages, Medieval times? Was it really 500 000 per year?

    Neither am I, but I have to wonder whether we can as a general rule trust “historical evidence.” Historians find numerous ancient documents attesting to a certain fact and conclude it is true. But how do we know those writers weren’t all basing their conclusions on the report of some crackpot...
  14. WGroleau

    Language app

    So much more adventure in learning as you go.
  15. WGroleau

    Language app

    In contrast, as hospitalero, I checked in a pilgrim who in response to a "preferred language" vociferously informed me (in Spanish) that he was Basque, neither Spanish nor French. But when I gave him a booklet in Basque, he stared at it for a few seconds, handed it back, and said "French." :)
  16. WGroleau

    What is Your Marching Music

    Navy must have had a special arrangement with a San Diego radio station when I was in boot camp. Every day at the time we were allowed to turn on a radio, the first words heard were "You will never get out of here."
  17. WGroleau

    Language barrier

    Ah, we Mexicans can't tell the difference. :)
  18. WGroleau

    How do you manage to overcome your language learning laziness?

    I am a linguaphile, so my motivation is innate. But something that is not only enjoyable but speeds up the learning is to read interesting things in the language, selecting (if possible) ones that are at a suitable level. For example, a "juvenile fiction" book I read in Italian. I probably did...
  19. WGroleau

    Language barrier

    Kicked out of the café. Class was already over, except for the summer trip to México. Sure. And pregnant is embarasada. Which didn't go over very well when you were fourteen years old in 1968. But it is impossible to be embarasado at any age. Spelling is important, too—billboard in El Paso...
  20. WGroleau

    Language barrier

    One of my ninth grade classmates got kicked out of a café in México when she tried to say she was embarrassed. éxito … suceso

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