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You are here: Home Life in Blogs & photos Tennis-watching helps you learn Spanish

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11/07/2008Tennis-watching helps you learn Spanish

Tennis-watching helps you learn Spanish Expatica blogger Jeanne Quigley talks about much Spanish she picked up while watching Wimbledon finals in a bar.

Rafael Nadal almost didn’t make it.

Talk about leaving it to the last minute. Having lost two Championship points in the fourth set, Nadal kept us all on our toes as the Men’s Singles Wimbledon Final went right down to the wire.

But at last, we have our Campeón.

Yes, I know he’s already a champion and that he won the French Open for the fourth consecutive year a few weeks ago, but Wimbledon seems to the one everybody wants to win.

And if Nadal is the King of France, Roger Federer has undoubtedly been the King of Wimbledon.

But not this year. Nadal took both titles, the first man since Bjorn Borg did it way back in 1980.

In fact, there are so many ‘firsts’ about Nadal it’s hard to keep track of them. If you really want to read about them, the Wikipedia website has all the statistics. And while the Spanish football team didn’t win a final for 44 years, it’s 42 years since the last Spaniard, Manual Santana took the title at Wimbledon.

But back to the tennis- watching.

I think I’ve mentioned in a previous blog that I only have Spanish programmes on my telly here. That’s so I’ll try and pick up some of the language.

The downside is that they don’t show a lot of sports. Yes, the footie was on channel Cuatro and so I had high hopes that they’d show the tennis. But no.

Day after day, we checked it out but nada.

Well, that’s not quite true. When Nadal played Rainer Schuettler in the semi-final on Friday, we discovered that Cuatro was showing it and obviously, when the Spaniard won, they were showing the final on Sunday.

But for the other matches, I went down to my local – Abuelo Jacinto’s. This is a great little place, a mixture of café and bar. The Spanish and non-Spanish, mainly British and Irish, use it.

Inside, it’s typically Spanish, with the high bar, Tropical on tap and plenty of tapas.

Outside, there are seats under the canopy and further outside, seats in the sun.

 Jacinto, his wife Inez and son Jacinto run the bar so it’s a great for practising the few words of Spanish. Though it’s interesting to see just how much English they’re all picking up!

There was no problem getting Jacinto to turn on the screen in the canopy, where there was a bit of a breeze blowing through.

But there were only three of us watching the tennis. I suppose you could say that at least there was someone to chat  to and discuss the games.

During the Ladies Final, however, between the Williams sisters, I was the only viewer. My two companions were able to get the station at home with their satellite dish. 

So there I was, sipping my copa de vino blanco, watching Venus beat Serena. I sat inside, at the bar this time. There were others there as well, drinking and eating.

During the games, while the girls were having their couple of minutes sit-down, I was able to ear-wig on what was going on. Nothing much, just the usual customer/owner chit-chat, but in Spanish.

But during play, while I was trying to understand the Spanish commentators, not only had I this chatting going on around me, I also had to contend with one of those machines for playing games that are often in bars. I have no idea what the game was; all I could hear was ‘uno, do, tre, cuatro’. Even the machines down here leave out the final ‘s’!

Bur we watched the grand final at home. And learned quite a lot of Spanish, incidentally.

We had the dictionary to hand and checked out any number of words, making the commentary that much easier to understand. I now know ‘servicio directo’, saque’, ‘punto de set’ and of course, the best one of all - Campeón.

photos by Flickr contributors mandj98 and maveric2003

Jeanne Quigley is Expatica Spain's blogger from Fuerte. Her fortnightly blogs will be published on alternate Fridays.


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