Pig Spanish

Remember Pig Latin? During my childhood, we spoke it constantly and thought we were very clever. Ouyay antcay asay atthay!

Many years ago, the husband and I traveled to South America. He was speaking at an international conference and I bullied my way along. I wanted to see Rio. It is probably the best trip I've ever taken with one exception. We don't speak Portuguese. We've both had a little history with Spanish and it's very similar to Portuguese. We developed a new language -- Pig Spanish. With Pig Spanish, you can find a bathroom or order a glass of wine. You can say "No Gas" when you're ordering water. You can order a sandwich but here's a bizarre thing -- every sandwich comes with a fried egg on top. We never figured this out.

We were warned that Rio is dangerous and the best bet was to hire a driver. (Otherwise someone might rob you or find a dark alley and spoon out a kidney.) We hired a driver for the week and he was delightful. Once he found out that Big Daddy was in a band, he started bringing tapes of his music for us to listen to in the car. One of the songs had to do with killing his girlfriend but we pretended to be unfazed.

As he heads off to college, the baby just tested out of three semesters of Spanish. After he's well educated, I'm going to teach him Pig Spanish.