Bene venisti, Benvenuto, y Bienvenido, Jazz Pickles.
That’s “welcome” in Latin, Italian, and Spanish. The B-syllable means “good” or “well,” the V-syllable means “to come.” That’s how English became “welcome,” meaning “it is well that you have come.”
I enjoy thinking about language and use it daily, although I’m not as good at acquiring it as I used to be.
When I was very young, learning English was so easy that I don’t even remember doing it. At an age when I was too intellectually deficient to tie my shoe or wipe my own butt, I managed to master English. WTF?
By the time I moved to Mexico in my late fifties, I was proficient in many things much more complex than shoe maintenance or bathroom routines, and I was fluent in one of the most difficult and least phonetic languages in the human world (this one), so I expected learning Spanish to be as easy as making a sandwich. I was wrong.
After nine years of daily effort, I can’t claim to be anything more than an advanced beginner or a dimwitted intermediate. I can get my idea across okay, but my Spanish must seem to native speakers like a peanut butter and petroleum jelly sandwich with sauerkraut between two slices of foam rubber.
People have told me that if I got a non-English-speaking girlfriend, I’d learn much more quickly, but my wife reminded me of how expensive girlfriends can be, especially when you’ve got a wife with a good lawyer, so I’ve given up on that idea.
English (US) · 