The untrained ear

On the bus to the beach, I met a very nice woman with a kid who seemed to be her granddaughter. The kid was far too happy to be a kidnap victim, but the woman was too old to have a kid that young, so let's stick with grandchild for the purposes of this story. Like most kids in Europe, she would not speak to me, just stared at me like I was an alien, which bums me out. Kids are the best way to learn the elements of a language. I can still remember certain Urdu words from listening to Shanila and Irfan teach Gibran.

The bus-grandmother and I spoke Spanish to each other, which taught me a lot, namely that I "speak well" (according to her). I know I'm good at imitating accents, and I can usually put my sentences together accurately, but I do not understand half of what I hear. If I can read it, I'm fine. But hearing...my ear is so untrained. Sure, I can sail through a Spanish course with no errors at all, because everyone enunciates carefully. But an old woman on the bus? Poor thing had to use multiple descriptions to help me understand what she was talking about. To be fair, I didn't know they called the cable car a funicular. She clearly wanted to tell me that the funicular was awesome, and gradually I figured out that she meant the cable car. I knew I couldn't speak intelligently when I couldn't say things like, "launch point, cable car, landing area," so I cheated. I told her I was afraid of heights (I'm not), just to end further inquiries about a topic I can't adequately discuss.

I realized that this was an auditory-training problem when I stopped to buy us some drinks at a stand. "Tres y uno," said the vendor. And I stood there dumbfounded, thinking, really? He wants me to give him three euros and a penny? Why the hell would he bother with a penny? No one uses pennies, for petesakes. They aren't useful for street traders.

Then (solely by ruling out the stupid notion that a street vendor would deal in pennies), I figured out that he was saying, "Tres euros."  Here is the difference:

Tres y uno sounds like "Trace ee-ooo-no."

Tres euros sounds like "Trace eh-ooo-doce."

Any idiot could tell the difference, if they knew what they were listening for. I'm just not trained to listen.

I don't know how much time it would take for me to learn this well. I'm not sure I know enough people who would be patient with me while I learn to say things like, "excuse me, is that really your grandchild, or did you kidnap her?"