If I were you

At around 11:15 at night, as Bill is finally slipping into dreamland after eating too much supper, he is jerked back to life by a gasp from his wife.

'I've got it!'

'Eh? Whatsamatter?'

'I've just realised why he kept telling me the time.'

'Doris…'

'Sorry.'

Bill mutters something grumpily, turns over and falls asleep. Doris smiles in quiet triumph, turns over and lies awake for another half hour. She has made a big breakthrough.

She and her husband are staying in La Gomera for three weeks, renting an apartment, and two friends have just arrived for a week's winter sunshine break in a hotel. Doris's problem began earlier in the day with a strange conversation while she and Bill were down at the port to meet their friends from the ferry. As they waited near the dock, Doris decided to check where the luggage van would park when it came off the ship, for passengers to retrieve their suitcases and rucksacks.

She approached a member of the Armas ferry dock crew and addressed him in her fledgling Spanish: 'Buenos días!'

'Buenos días, señora.'

'Cuando llega el barco…' When the ship arrives…

'A las nueve y media, señora.' Nine thirty. He smiled affably and began to turn away.

Doris hurriedly tried again. 'No, no… cuando llega, dónde…'

'Nueve y media,' he repeated a touch more briskly, holding up nine fingers then crossing one of them.

Doris gave up, perplexed. The ferry sailed into the harbour shortly after nine thirty, their two friends descended the gangway waving cheerfully, reclaimed their luggage from the van and all was well. Except that Doris's failure of communication niggled at the back of her mind. As a retired teacher, she liked to understand things.

At breakfast the next day in their apartment she reveals her breakthrough to an entranced husband.

'I know why he thought I was asking what time the ferry would arrive.'

'Yeah?' Bill reaches for the jam. 'Good stuff this. What is it? Label says albarry, albarrycock? Or albarrycoke is it?'

'Al-barry-cock-ay. Apricot. I know what I got wrong. I should have used the subjunctive. I should have said cuando llegue el barco. It means literally, when the ship may arrive.'

'You'd hope there's not much doubt about that. Hijacked by pirates I suppose, could be. Or hits an iceberg.' Bill sniggers. Doris punches him across the table, not too hard. She's very pleased with herself.

'Sub what, was it?' Bill enquires, unwisely.

'Junctive.' She has now realised, she explains to her husband, that subjunctive verbs are very important in Spanish. People use them all the time. In English they've almost disappeared.

'If I were you, is about the only common one I can think of,' she tells him. 'Were'.

'Posh. If I was you, is what most folk say. Ninety-nine percent of the British population, guaranteed.'

'Not if they've been taught properly at school, Bill.'

Bill blows a raspberry. Doris sighs. But there's an entire chapter in her Teach-Yourself-Spanish book about subjunctives in the present, past and future tenses.

'I'd skip that one, frankly,' Bill advises. 'Were I you.'

-------------- NOTES --------------

Apologies if you know this already, but here it is anyway: the subjunctive mood is used for occasions when you're talking of what may be rather than what is. In English it barely exists any more, lingering only in that other-world version of English, reportese. For example: I advised that he consult a solicitor.

In real life most people would say I advised him to consult a solicitor, or perhaps …that he should consult a solicitor.

Not so in Spanish, unfortunately. You hear the subjunctive all the time once you're tuned in. The first one I recognised (eventually) came from an elderly lady we frequently passed on our way into town, who always greeted us with ¡Que lo pasen bien!, literally 'that you may pass it well', equivalent to 'have a good time'. I'm sure the elderly lady had never heard of the subjunctive, she just did it.

And on Bill's other concern: the word for apricot is albaricoque. Some people prefer peach jam, melocotón, or strawberry, fresa, or even orange, naranja, which of course is a special jam called marmalade but all jams are called mermelada in Spanish, another little breakthrough you have to make.