With the rain, the cold and the short days of late fall, things are slowing down fast now on the farm. It’s time to turn under the tomato plants and put the field to rest beneath a cover crop. It’s time, too, to put this column to rest. I have enjoyed this opportunity to share my enthusiasm about learning Spanish with you. The discipline of coming up with a semi-coherent Spanish lesson each month has focused my attention once more on what it means to learn another language. I am constantly reminded how much of a student I am and how much I have left to learn about Spanish before I can claim to speak well. My best teachers are working all around me and I’m grateful for their patience. It’s important to remember to return the favor of teaching language by speaking English with any Spanish speaker who wants to learn.

This hasn’t been a bad year on the farm but costs (or gastos) never seem to go down so we have expanded our restaurant delivery route this year to earn more money. There may be French or Italian written on the menus of San Francisco’s best restaurants but there is lots of Spanish in the kitchens. I’ve been putting the lessons I’ve written for you into practice as I go from restaurant to restaurant. It occurs to me that we farmer-students of Spanish have an advantage over academic students. Not only are teachers all around us as we go about out daily business but we can make or lose money depending on how well we communicate. Profit or loss is (for me) more energizing than As and Fs.

When I enter the kitchen of a restaurant I’m selling to I try to remember my first lesson, which is “shut up and listen.” I try to hear the moods and attitudes at work in the business. I listen for the formal Usted and informal tú forms of address because I like to know who is the authority in the kitchen and who commands respect. I try to hear the accents of the Spanish being spoken and I make a game out of trying to guess where my new acquaintances are from before I ask them. One fellow fooled me. As he told a co-worker what to do I was puzzled – it wasn’t all Spanish he was speaking, or English, and it didn’t sound like an indigenous dialect. What was it? Call it Frenish, a mix of French and Spanish. “Prepare las amusés bouches” he said, or “prepare the mouth amusement,” kitchen French for the first tiny but elegant appetizer.

Following my own advice, I’ve had fun listening for cognates and suffixes that can help me unravel a word I don’t already know. The vocabulary of a kitchen is quite different from the speech in the field so there’s lots to learn. Caldo means broth or soup and is a cognate with our own cauldron or big cooking pot. The latin majorative suffix ón hiding in our English word cauldron hints at the large size of the pot and the “big soup” that could be prepared in it. But Spanish-speaking cooks tend to call large pots casos, a word cognate with our own casserole, and one that reminds me how imprecise learning from cognates can be.

Finding someone to sign for the invoice is easier when I can ask a busy cooking crew in Spanish to sign for the receipt. “¿Hay alguien que pueda firmar el recibo?” Can anyone sign the receipt? Without the akwardness of having to speak English somebody is emboldened to sign promptly and I don’t have to spend time rooting around in the pantry or wine cellar looking for a gringo to sign the paperwork. With a signature on the invoice I’m on my way, running out the door to my truck double parked in heavy traffic. “Hasta miércoles” I say on the way out. “Until Wednesday.” I don’t want them to forget I’ll be back next week.

Which brings me to saying goodbye to you all. Adiós, literally “to God,” is an appropriate way to say goodbye, akin to the French adieu. If I were going to see you tomorrow I could say “hasta mañana.” “Hasta luego” means “until then” and is useful when the “when” is vague. Our new governor Mr. Schwarzenegger opened his campaign against former governor Davis by telling him “Hasta la vista,” which means “until we see each other again.” It was an ironic greeting that played well to California’s familiarity with Spanglish and with Schwarzenegger’s own Terminator movies. In business when we need to fire someone we use the more precise term despedir, as in “Está Usted despedido.” “You, Sir, are dismissed.” I hope you don’t have to practice that phrase a lot. When someone is laid off, temporarily or given a break the verb descansar is appropriate. “Descánsense Ustedes esta sábado, por favor. Hasta lunes.” “Please take Saturday off. See you Monday.”

One of my favorite signoffs or goodbyes comes from Daisy Fuentes, a bubbly blonde who used to emcee Spanish language music video programs. At song’s end she would wiggle her pinkies and chirp “chaucito, baby.” Chau is Castillian for the Italian Ciao. When I’m dealing with some sourfaced cook at odds with the world I’ll sometimes bid adiós with a “chaucito, baby” and the incongruity of hearing the phrase from a bearded bear-like farmer like me will draw a smile. So “chaucito, baby” to you, Gracias, y Feliz Año Nuevo.
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