Spanish words for shopping and eating out in restaurants, simplified with memory aids

 We checked into a parador, one of those wonderful historic hotels in Spain. Next morning we went down to breakfast. We went to reception. We did not know the Spanish word for breakfast. The receptionist knew no English. I tried asking in French. She did not understand. My husband tried German. She did not understand.

I had to go all the way back to the bedroom and hunt through my suitcase until I found my small Spanish dictionary. Desayuno.

The receptionist then reached under the reception desk. She revealed that she had a four-language booking form which included most of the words one might need in a hotel.

I now know the word for breakfast in Spanish. I also know that the word for restaurant is similar in both languages. I could also mime or draw. However, I try to learn a few words of Spanish every day. Finding a link between the letters or ideas is helpful.

In addition to the word for breakfast, it is handy to understand the words for toilet, or ladies and gentlemen. 

My late father made a mistake when he was in the Spanish restaurant, La Giralda, in Pinner Green, London. He went to the toilets and saw the sign Senoras. He assumed that was plural for senor. So he pushed open the door. The lady inside was washing her hands. She was outraged. She complained to the management. The restaurant owner came over to ask us, "A lady customer has just complained that your father walked into the ladies toilet. Can you please explain why?"

When my father explained, we all rolled around in hysterical laughter. The moral is, a little learning is a dangerous thing. Once you have started, keep on learning.

Spanish - English

amo - I love

aires - airs

barato - cheap - (sounds like bargain)

Buenos - good ones (sounds like beautiful and beneficial) 

caro - expensive (my image is the cost of a car)

centro comercial - shopping mall

comprar - to buy

desayuno - breakfast (sounds like day starts, you know)

hotel - hotel

ir - to go 

me gusta - I like (sounds like I eat with gusto)

para ver - to see 

restaurante - restaurant

sandalias - sandals 

sombrero - hat

vino blanco - white wine (sounds like a blank colour, colourless wine)

vino tinto - red wine (sounds like tinted)

visitar - to visit

English - Spanish

airs - aires

breakfast - desayuno

gentlemen - caballeros 

good ones - buenos

hat - sombrero

hotel - hotel

I like - me gusta

I love - amo (sounds like amorous)

I want - quiero (looks like my quest)

I want to buy - quiero comprar

ladies - señoras

restaurant - restaurante

to visit - visitar

red wine - vino tinto

sandals - sandalias

shopping mall - centro comercial

toilet/bathroom - baño (sounds like 'in the bathroom, you know')

white wine - vino blanco

Useful Websites

duolingo.com

earwormslearning.com

translate.google.com

 

Learn some Malay-Indonesian and Understand and Remember Slang

Lots of Indonesian is easy. Ticket is tiket.
Tiket Harian Berjaminan, literally: Daily Ticket with Guarantee (a seven day ticket).
Jalan is street. You see this word all over the place, on street signs and maps.

However, after you learn to read Malay/Indonesian, you find that in Indoneisa they speak slang, a bit like the British shortening words, saying yeah for yes.
Wikivoyage gives a handy phrase list and I have added my own aide-memoire (French for memory aid):

How to speak prokem like a Betawi

The everyday speech of Jakartans (Betawi) is liberally laced with slang (prokem) expressions. Like any slang, words come in and out of fashion with bewildering rapidity, but some features can be distinguished:

• f becomes p
• z becomes j
• The prefix me- for verbs becomes ng-
• The suffixes -i and -kan turn into -in

A short glossary of common Jakartan expressions:

no 

tidak → nggak/kagak/gak/ogah/moh

I 

saya/aku → gua/gue

you 

kamu/anda → lu/lo ('A n d a' is you, which you see on signs in Singapore. For the written word, I think of 'and you'. I had to insert spaces because the spell checker thinks I have mistyped the word and. For the spoken word, think of you and lu.) 

sorry 

maaf → maap

to come up 

menaik → naek

to take 

mengambil → ngambil

to look 

melihat → ngeliat

to use 

memakai/menggunakan → pake/make/ngegunain

to visit 

mengunjungi → ngunjungin

what are you doing? 

kamu sedang apa? → ngapain?

to pay 

membayar → bayar/ngebayar (The shortened version is simpler and easier to remember. B a y a r for pay her. 'ow much am I gonna pay 'er, gebayar, meaning to pay.)

how much is it?

berapa harganya? → berapaan nih? (How do you learn this phrase? Think of pan as pay. Think of nih is you as in the Chinese greeting nih how - how are you.

Keep pointing at items on the table or in the room and asking, 'berapaan nih?'. Think of if as 'how much as you asking,' or 'how much would I pay you for this?' Think of it as: 'how much would I pay you for bread?' Berapaan nih? Berapaan nih? Berapaan nih? How much could I bear to pay you for bread? Berapaan nih?

If you have trouble saying it, don't say it. Ask somebody else (preferably somebody Indonesian) to say it. Just listen to them. Three times. Berapaan nih.

Glossary - means a short list of word explanations, like a short dictionary

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Language teacher, English and other languages.

Vineyard visit near Verona. Try sweet Recioto wine

Castle rebuilt and opened - New winery visit in Rioja, Spain

When I visited Rioja, Spain, I spent a week visiting wineries, starting with Lopez de Heredia, then La Rioja Alta and several others. We were unable to visit one of the wineries because it was being renovated. The good news is, now it's open again, after a grand rebuilding programme, restoring the castle, stone by stone.

Hurry!
Because the castle has been closed for over a year - is it more like three? - the tours are now booked up for the next three months. So, if you would like to visit the Rioja region of Northern Spain, either you must rush now to make a booking, or wait a long while until the backlog clears.

I met Pablo Gonzalez-Calvo of the Export Department who was visiting his buyers. The biggest surprise was that the grand r e s e r v a wines are not from the years specified by the region's wine governing body and imposed on the vineyard. The vineyard owners decide for themselves which is the best year for their crop, which year they will hold back or reserve the best wine to be aged in barrel and bottle, matured, mixed with other wines to get the perfect balance of flavour, aroma, and of course sold at a higher price because it is better wine, from the best year, and keeping it stored costs money and delay on profit from the investment. Pablo proudly says, "We decide!"

(Yes, I had to separate the letters of r e s e r v a because the English spell checker wants to turn the word to reserve. The r e s e r v a wines are of curse, reserved. Spanish is a lovely, easy, user-friendly language to learn. Just add or remove the a or o on a word and you can translate.)

What do you learn on a vineyard tour. On your first, second or third tour in your life, if you don't already know, you will learn that criantha is the basic or table wine and r e s e r v a is reserved and a grand reserved is even grander or more special. Each time you take a tour, one more fact goes into your brain and your understanding or wine making and wine labels increases, making buying a wine or choosing it in a restaurant has a greater chance of giving you what you enjoy and value for money. You can also spot a bargain, and, whether you like it or not, you will appreciate tasting or even just seeing something special or unusual.

At a tasting, you discover what you enjoy more. Either it is worthwhile, depending on your budget, to have the better wines whenever you can, or on special occasions, or when one is given away for free at a tasting. Alternatively you may decide some or all of the more expensive wines are not worth the money, so no need to hanker after them. You can then be confident that the cheaper wines are better value and quite good enough for you.

Eton Vintners
 I was invited to a tasting of his wines at a shop called Eton Vintners which is just around the corner from Windsor castle which we passed on the way home. (Windsor and Eton are adjacent. The bridge over the river Thames connects them. Windsor, famous for the castle where flags show if the royal family is resident, and Eton famous for the school.) If you are in England and plan to visit the area of Windsor, get on the Eton Vintners mailing list and go to one of the tastings. They have a discount scheme for regular buyers.

He had brought along several bottles for us to taste and told us all about each wine. We had some bread and cheese and a rather gristly salami to go with it. I and my teeth and tongue all preferred the bread and cheese.

The Marques de Murrieta Website
The website can be read in English, or Spanish. It has sections on the history, visits and buying wine.
I loved their description of the founder. I particularly liked the later quotation:

“To invite a person into your house is to take charge of his happiness as long as he is under your roof”.

Brillat-Savarin, French gastronome

A few translations:
Calvo - Spanish surname from the Middle Ages, originally meaning bald.
Crianza - basic or table wine which can be drunk young (pronounced criantha)
Gonzalez - Spanish surname meaning son of Gonzalo. Second most common surname in Spain after Garcia.
Marqués - Spanish for Marquis (not to be confused with the French word marque which means brand)
Pablo - Paul
r e s e r v a - reserve or reserved for ageing in the barrel and later longer in the bottle

More information on the wines and this new opportunity to taste and buy at the castle where you can do a tour from:
Marques de Murrieta
Estates and Wines
marquesdemurrieta.com
pazolbarrantes.com

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.