A language course needen't be a bore - all you need is sun, wine and spectacular scenery
I have always considered myself a duffer at languages, but have picked up a few useful smippets along the way. I can order drink in most languages, call a Russian "comrade" in his mother tongue, and even manage "hello sailor" in Greek, but when is comes to joined-up conversation, like many Britons I find myself floundering in a sea of dimly remembered future imperfects and past participles. Now, after just five days in Spain, it's not hard to see why.
Instead of drearily declining verbs, wannabe polyglots should be playing charades, games of snap and describing the pictures in a Baby's First Words book. And ideally, they should be doing this overlooking magnificient mountains. It worked for me; signing up for a language-learning holiday I expected to the class dunce-though a stay in teh mountain village of Capiliera whould perhaps compensate for any embarrassment.
I wasn't wrong. Capiliera, 5000ft up in the Sierra Nevada, 90 minutes' drive and a world away from Malaga's tower blocks, is a magical place. Red and purple bougainvillea tumbles over whitewashed walls that border its crooked, cobbled streets. And its main road is lined with pavement cafes; shops pungent with serrano hams, cheeses and olives;and craft stores displaying exquisite pottery, tapestries and shaggy jarapas rugs made by local artists.
Over dinner in a cosy local restaurant, I got to know my host, The Spanish Experience owner Patsy Pilkington, and fellow linkguists, comprising four couples and two single women. Flowing wine swept away our British reticence. Patsy, a former fitness consultant, had set up her company after a life-changing stay in the Spanish mountains.
Gillian and Les were retired - or, as the Spanish so charmingly put it jubilado - and had a home in Spain, as had Marion who, sadly, lost her husband shortly after the purchase. Joan, once married to a Spaniard, had come to fill the gaps in her grammar and brought second husband Paul along for the ride, while Hubert, a keen hiker, was drawn by the prospect of mountain walks.
After dinner, Patsy sorted us into three groups according to ability, with Hubert, Les and me in the beginner's class. Next morning, we discovered that as learners we definitely had the best of the bargain. While the others headed for lessons in a local appartment, our teacher - artist Jaime Autles Campos - took us off to play in his spectacular mountainside gallery-cum teashop.
We had our first class on the terrace, drinking in spectacular scenary with the occasional sherry. And Jaime's approach to teaching Spanish proved more refreshing than this herbal teas. We learned as children do, using playing cards and a picture book (belonging to his six-year-old daughter), communicating as best we could without worrying about grammar. It worked like a dream; by the end of our first lesson we could order lunch at a local bodega and on day three shopped for veggies at a market and chattered away basic, but comprehensible, Spanish.
Mountain walks, bibulous dinners and a day out in Granada gave us so much to talk about that one day for lunch in nearby Lanjaron, I was sufficiently confident to order the food myself. Unfortunately, my smattering of Italian got in the way when I requested pan y burro. Joan came to the rescue:"The Spanish for butter is mantequilla," she wispered. "You ordered brad and a donkey".
Ah well. The Alhambra wasn't build in a day.
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