Friday, June 21, 2019

We Speak Camino

The language of the Camino is Spanish. It may seem odd that to me this is odd, but it is strange to me. So much of the world functions in English, and so many of my travels have been dominated by English that this Spanish-language environment has been a surprise.

Also shocking has been the number of Italians we have met here and their willingness to teach us Italian.

Our Spanish (and our Italian) has grown by leaps and bounds. Here is a Camino primer.

1.) Hay visto cane.

We see Paquito (from Italy) every day on the Camino and love to tell others that we saw him (in Italian of course).

2.) Hay visto farfalle. Hay visto cavallo. Hay visto Tian. We can see lots of stuff in Italian and then talk about it. It’s a handy construction. Highly recommend. 

3.) Ampolla



Blister. Also pronounced “bluster” if you are from Barcelona. Ampolla was one of our first Camino words because one of us developed a healthy family of blisters very rapidly within a couple of days on the Camino. Yup. Gross. 

4.) Vale (pronounced “vah-lay”)


Life is totally vale (okay) when you sit down every night to a glass (or bottle) of wine and a three course meal. Things don’t get much more vale than that really. 

5.) Sello


These are the sellos that we have to collect a couple times each day to prove that we are pilgrims and have walked the entire way. Being able to remember the word sello has proven challenging so sello is a word that you should start working on now. You know, for when you do YOUR Camino. 

Buen Camino.





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