Stilton to Cervantes

Image: Wikimedia

Five books stacked neatly on the tablecloth painted with lemons, strawberries, and oranges. The note on top is in Spanish: I leave you these books as I have already read them. Pablo (inside a smiley face).

El pirata Garrapata en la India, El viaje de Nicolas, Un duende a rayas, and two by Geronimo Stilton: Las Aventuras del Rey Arturo and Al de la Tercer Viaje Reino Fantasia. The last is Pablo’s favorite, he told me, and the one I’ll read first.

My flat mate, who is learning English herself, knew I craved Spanish books that I can actually get through without having to look up the meaning of every other word and forgetting it moments later. The books are a loan from her 10-year-old cousin.

They say you must see a word seven times before it sticks in memory; personal experience tells me it’s triple that for this woman over 50. I’m learning another language and that might save me from Alzheimer’s but not from using my phone dictionary almost continually.

I love Spanish the way I loved English as a child. The words roll and twirl and tease, a language where one letter is the difference between being tired and being married (cansada, casada); wood and mature (madera, madura); where to wait and to hope are the same word (esperar), and to love someone is to want her (la quiero).

The Royal Spanish Academy, housed in an actual building near the famous Retiro Park in Madrid, is charged with overseeing the Spanish language. Its original aim was to make sure Spanish speakers will always be able to read Cervantes. I imagine a building filled with words.

I fill myself with Spanish words, but I will never be finished learning Spanish. I do hope to graduate to Cervantes one day.