Whatever happened to Esperanto?

I’ve never really had an aptitude for languages. I was always good at English at school but as soon as it came to learning foreign ones I was useless.

As we’ve travelled around Western Europe I knew I could rely on Julie’s French to get us by in France.

Neither of us had more than a smattering of phrase book Spanish before we arrived in Spain but two hours of lessons a week took us to beginners’ standard.

We knew Portugal would be the biggest challenge. I’d bought a “teach yourself” CD and book some months before we left home with the intention of learning some Portuguese before we arrived in Portugal, but as with many good intentions it didn’t happen.

So what have I learnt?

• Of the three languages Spanish is the easiest to learn as most of the grammar and pronunciation follow standard rules (which also made us realise just how irregular a lot of English grammar and pronunciation is and how hard English must be to learn)

• It’s true what they say in the guide books – most people appreciate it if you try and speak to them in their own language, although of course the French tend to only appreciate it if you manage to get the pronunciation exactly right.

• Portuguese is a very strange language. In written form it looks very similar to Spanish and the two languages share quite a few common words but it sounds completely different, more Eastern European than Western. Which explains why Spaniards find it so hard to understand and Romanians find it easy to learn.

• Away from the Algarve where almost everyone can speak English, many Portuguese have French as a second language (apparently many Portuguese left Portugal to go and work in France during the post-war period). We had a couple of occasions in Portugal where we were trying to converse with someone who couldn’t speak any English (and our Portuguese vocabulary is so limited as to be useless) – and after struggling for a while with gesticulations and sign language they asked “parlez-vous Francais?”.

• On our journey from Portugal across Northern Spain we did have a brief encounter with Basque. Now, compared with Basque, Portuguese is a walk in the park. Basque bears no relation whatsoever to any other European language and in the Basque strongholds it is the only language they use for road signs, restaurant menus etc. At least in Wales most signs are in both English and Welsh but in Basque country they seem to make little or no allowance for those who can’t speak the language - it’s hard to believe you are still in Spain. It is the second time that we’ve visited this region and both times we’ve wanted to move on as quickly as possible.

Coming back to France has made me realise that my French vocabulary is fairly good. I still struggle with verbs and tenses and genders and but I’ve decided in the four months we have here to just go for it. If I can make myself understood I’m happy to accept that they may not be impressed by my French pronunciation with a “Norf Lundun” accent, but hey – that’s their problem!