My wife and I have an amusing time communicating in Mexico. We go to Oaxaca, not nearly as touristy as some of the Mexico destinations, so some of the locals speak good English, others very little. Back in high school, forty years ago, I took two years of Spanish. I learned many words and pronunciations at the time, but many of the words have flown the coup. My wife speaks reasonably good Italian. She has been studying it now for about five years at a local college and with a private tutor. Italian is, in many ways, similar to Spanish. For example, days of the week are not quite alike, but they have many similarities. There are other ways in which the languages veer in opposite directions from one another. It can be hard to guess just when that might occur. Case in point: We were in a nice restaurant And we wanted some butter for the bread (Pane in Italian, Pan in Spanish) I, for the life of me, could not remember the Spanish word for butter, if I ever learned it. So, in this case, figuring that a basic product like butter might be said much the same or "close" in both Spanish and Italian, my wife asked for butter in Italian. Oops. You can click on the photo of the butter dish below to see what it is that she actually ordered when the Italian word was translated back into Spanish. That is the long and the short of it. We ordered a burro brought to the table. The Italian word for butter is burro. Unfortunately, the Spanish word for butter is not even close -- "mantequilla". Oh well, you win some and lose some but who cares if you have a good time. By the way, the burro we ended up with was very stubborn but fun and we got to ride him around the block twice. Thanks for stopping by, Steven L. Smith
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