Just a short note on accent: almost every ´g`at the beginning of a word seems to disappear. ´Gallina´ which means ´hen´ (rather than ´gallo´ which is more like chicken) sounds almost exactly like ´hyena´, so I was momentarily confused, until I remembered we were in a normal home with hens and not in Africa. Although the mountains do look quite a lot like the kalahari. Chicken coup is gallinero, though I do not think this as nice sounding as ´poulaille´ in French which has to be one of my favourite words.
I think this is something that also occurs in Latin America but I don´t really have much knowledge of that, other than that they also say´guey` which sounds like ´way´. Maybe this is a bastardisation of the American use of guy, who knows. Actually I think I first heard this pronunciation when Carina was talking about guava-paste bocadillos (which in Columbia are not sandwiches but a snacky thing). And this sounded completely and utterly like ´wava´ and I did not understand. Other than this my knowledge goes no further than an anecdote from a guy at Lorena´s birthday party. Lorena is the sister of Cati, (mum of the family I´m staying with) and they are some of ten siblings. Anyway, he´d met a Mexican chap whilst working in Bosnia, who at one point asked him ´¿vamos a tomar el mueble?´meaning `are we going by car´ rather than anything to do with furniture.
Things are coming along language wise though! I´ve been told the accent is strong here. Reading Spanish I have few problems, so I think the ability to discern real words in a thick accent is probably really good practice, even if the vocabulary turns out to be very different from Latin America. Here they say piña sweetcorn as well as pineapple, which I thought was maíz elsewhere.
Similarly, absolutely everything is ´ito´ or ´ita´, especially if you are five. There are all the normal ones like Abuelita, perrito, cosita that alter nouns in a way that we might, like ´doggy´ or ´granny´ but I like how things like ´momentito´and ´aguacita´ are said instead of poco or pequeña. I´m going to collect them. My favourite by far though was today when Cati said ´grandito´which must be oxymoronic?
I realise I´ve been using the acute accent key on Spanish keyboard as speechmarks. Whoops. Next time I will write more about the island and what´s here but I´m waiting until I (maybe) transfer some pictures as well.
*I´ve just found this about mueble: ´Mueble and móvil (as in automóvil) have the same origin and can mean the same.´
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