Yesterday, when Kathleen Brugger and I took advantage of low tide to hike out around the headlands on the north side of San Juan del Sur’s gorgeous bay, we ran into a lot of fishermen.
And I, in my broken, semi-fluent spanish, asked them “What are you fishing for?” (Para que estan pescando?) I was expecting to hear the names of fish I’d never heard of in spanish, and, to be honest, possibly had never even heard of in english, since I don’t fish. But it’s a common enough question to ask a fisherman, right?
I am Puerto Rican and Spanish was my first language, but I mostly grew up in the States, speaking English. The Spanish I heard at home, and during my summer vacations at my Grandmother’s house and at my cousins in Puerto Rico, had to do with common household things like eating and sweeping and blessing each other before we went to sleep at night, like “Duermas con los angelitos” (“May you dream/sleep with the little angels”), which we still say to each other at night.
None of us fished. So, not only would I not know the names of fish, in Spanish or English, but I apparently never learned the proper lingo to use when greeting a fisherman or how to ask what they were fishing for because the answer I got each time was “Para comer” (“To eat”).
Yes of course I felt like a stupid gringo, on more than one level.
But I covered it up by rattling off more questions about the name of the fish (“Aguja”: Needle), how they caught it (with a throw line which is initially wrapped around a board and then partially unwound and tossed into the waves by hand), and how they prepare it (either in ceviche, or cooked in a soup or fried).
The one guy with the speargun had something orange in a plastic bottle in his sack which I didn’t catch the name of but was apparently a Chinese delicacy which sells for $200 dollars a plate in Managua. He wasn’t planning on eating his catch. At least not directly.
Another guy was wearing snorkeling gear and was diving in a large, deep tidal pool.
We didn’t get to talk to him so I’m not sure what he was fishing for (other than to eat).
Nor would I have known how to ask. There is so much to learning a language. Exact translations don’t always work.
