En el Instituto Cervantes, nakasubsob!

Giving yourself the benefit of the doubt, you answer, Si on being asked if you speak Spanish. The national language, after all, is peppered with Spanish words – ventana/bintana, silla/silya, mesa/mesa, cuarto/kuarto and lots more. Even basura is "garbage" in both languages. You clarify, "Entiendo, pero tengo que practicar." – "I understand, but I have to practice."

So you plunge ahead, straight into deep water. You invite your Español visitor to almusal, i.e., a quick pan de sal at 6 a.m. and he thinks you’re having almuerzo, which back home is a leisurely lunch starting at 2 p.m. Siempre to a Peninsular is "always" or "forever," while it’s "of course" that you have in mind. You mean "goodbye" or a casual "okay" when you say sige, not the command, to "follow" or to "continue," that Spaniards understand by sigue. Say siguro for "maybe" and your Castellano friend thinks you said "sure."

And would you have suspected that No me lo dio means "He (or she) did not give it to me." Or that Lo veo is "I see it" while Lo vio is "He (or she) saw it." You panic and start blurting things like: Donde esta el sandok? and En la dingding, nakasuksok.

Actually, most college-going Pinoys age 30 and up have had 12 units of Español, most of it promptly forgotten after Spanish 14 finals. I can’t say the loss was serious for me, but four decades later, I unexpectedly acquired a Madrileño son-in-law and, in due course, two adorable Tisoy grandchildren. They all speak perfect English, but I thought, "Sige ngâ, I’ll surprise them."

I began by reading and by practicing on indulgent friends. The magazine Hola! has mesmerizing contents, focusing on the comings and goings of people like Isabel Preysler and her amigas. However, the vocabulary doesn’t go much beyond fashion and passion. I also tried, but immediately gave up, Spanish language movies and television. Unlike our homegrown Kastilas, genuine Spaniards chatter away at Armalite speed. Check out Channel 73 on Sky Cable and see if you can understand anything.

I decided I wasn’t getting anywhere and so dropped by Instituto Cervantes one day. Director Javier Galván Guijo steered me to Jefa de Estudios Ana Isabel Reguillo Pelayo, who called faculty member Luis Roger Rodríguez Paniagua. (Don’t you just love those long melodious names?) Blocking off all avenues of retreat, Luis handed me a 70-plus-item placement test. He checked my answers and asked me something I didn’t quite get, but which I guessed was, "How long ago were you in Spanish class?" So I replied, "Hace cincuenta años." Luis gave me a pained look, asked a few more questions and concluded that I belonged to Nivel 8 – Level 8 – which was a bit humbling, since there are 18 niveles in all.

And thus it came to pass that exactly 40 years after my final Ph.D. class at Stanford University, I was back in school, the newest in a class of 20. Ahead lay 10 weeks (three hours of class per week) of recitations and exercises, compositions, homework and other long-forgotten nightmares suddenly returned to life.

There were some people my age, including (surprise) my occasional coffee crony, contractor Donnie Altura; former Court of Appeals Justice (now Labor Secretary) Arturo Brion; and Jose Malang, Sweepstakes Office executive. Donnie spoke Spanish at home as a boy, but wanted to perfect his grammar. Art had intended to pursue doctoral studies in Spain, though everything had been put on hold since he joined GMA’s Cabinet. Pepe began at Nivel Uno in 2004 and still aims to both read and speak the language well.

The rest are young people – bright, hard-working and fun. Dez Arellano works as Internet writer for CITEM, the government office that organizes international trade exhibits. Maureen Venezuela is co-founder of a business process outsourcing (BPO) company and is mastering both Spanish and French. Joana Dimal is now a Spanish translator for a BPO. Robbie Moral, Kiko Ocale and Mary Anne Tabones are fresh graduates of Philippine Normal University. Robbie and Kiko (baptized "Paco" in school) are math majors, while Mary Anne, who just began teaching at De la Salla Canlubang, studied English. They hope to study in Spain some day. There are two doctors in class – Sarah de los Reyes of UP/PGH pursuing an MS in Public Health and Angelita Sta. Teresa, a dermatologist. Fretti Fanchoon used to work at the Supreme Court and now has a private law practice.

Felino Garcia and Arthur Lequín work at call centers and rush to class, sleepless, straight from work. They have terrific accents and intonations – Felino spent a year in Mexico and learned by immersion, while Arthur is Instituto-grown, having started at Nivel Uno. They confirm that Spanish speakers are in great demand in call centers and earn a lot more than plain English speakers – calls come in from the US (Mexicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans), and from Latin America and Spain.

History buffs point out that much of Philippine written history, including the writings of our revolutionary heroes, is in Spanish. Learning languages, too, is supposed to jolt desiccated brain cells back to life. I certainly hope so – the conjugations I thought I’d mastered the night before (hice, hiciste, hizo… fuera, fueras, fuera…) are usually gone by dawn.

Luis Rodríguez (an ex-Spanish Army man built like Arnold Schwarzenneger) was my first professor. Then followed, for Nivel 9, Luis’ Filipina wife, neé Mónica Ortega Lorenzana, who grew up in Spain. This term, the class is under Macario Ofilada Mina (Ph.D. Philosophy, Universidad de Salamanca), a total linguist who speaks Spanish, English, Tagalog, French, Italian, Hiligaynon and Ilocano, plus some Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Sanskrit and German.

Trained in teaching Spanish as a second language, Instituto professors naturally talk contemporary Spanish, which Macario observes is different from what our Tisoys speak. He explains that Filipino Spanish has many Mexican words and has remained largely unchanged since the last Spanish governor general sailed home in 1898.

Classes are interesting because in addition to grammar – things like "When do you use ser and estar?" and "Watch out for preterito imperfecto de subjuntivo, oraciones condicionales, and other competencias lingüísticas" – students learn how to cope with daily trials and tribulations (shopping, for example) and, generally, about Spanish life and culture. Lessons are based on everyday situations: newlyweds looking for an apartment; friends deciding where to go for the summer; a young man deciding if he should give up his Madrid job and follow his girlfriend to Stockholm; a resort employee pacifying an irate guest whose cold water tap spews boiling water and vice versa; a homeowner dealing with carpenters’ excuses.

You have to be on your toes. Mónica once gave us a choice of job – being a kindergarten teacher or the double of an action star – and asked us to write an application, attaching a CV. Another time, the exercise was what one would do if an elderly uncle or aunt dies, leaving everything to the one who weds the surviving spouse. (Someone answered he would take it seriously if the wealth were as vast as that of a former president and if the widow had the looks of his first lady.) This Saturday, we’re supposed to comment on a news story about a proposed ceasefire in Lebanon.

Classrooms have flat-screen TV and CD players, which allowed Luis to play a black comedy with Spanish sub-titles, "El Crimen Perfecto," and to ask for a reaction paper. It’s a hilarious movie, if you don’t mind a chopped-up corpse, incinerated body parts, blackmail, a maniacal wife and dreadful in-laws, etc.

Miscellanea about Spain and Spaniards, as well as words and slang that language books omit, are clarified in class. To make sipsip you would hacerle la pelota a, but I’d better not divulge what little brown thing a "pitoy moreno" is. Don or Doña prefaces a name as a sign of respect, not necessarily of wealth. Maria Concepción and Maria Consuelo should pick a nickname other than maricón – that’s a big, fat and otherwise repellent marica, which is your everyday lovable gay. It turns out, too, that being invited to a Madrid wedding is a mixed blessing. In addition to wedding gifts, guests are expected to bring cash to help cover wedding costs.

Time was when people learned Spanish so they could make chica-chica with people like Don Jaime and Doña Bea. These days, they do so more because they want to study in Spain and maybe read Noli me Tangere in the original language, or because they hope to work in or do business with the Spanish-speaking world. It’s also nice to know that one would be able to communicate with the 400 million people worldwide who speak the language and that English and Spanish are the two major international business languages.

And so, when a Hispanic visitor asks, "Donde estarás el Sabado que viene por la mañana?" ("Where will you be this Saturday morning?"), a typical Manileño might answer, "Sa kama, tulóg," "at the golf course," "malling," "nagpapasarap sa spa," "nanonood ng cine." For quite a few people, though, the reply could be, "En el Instituto, nakasubsob."

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Jaime C. Laya is chairman of Philtrust Bank and is on the boards of various corporations, foundations and other organizations.

Instituto Cervantes is on T.M. Kalaw St., beside Casino Español. It occupies its own new building recently inaugurated by Spanish Ambassador Ignacio Sagaz Temprano and then-director Javier Galván Guijo, who was also the building’s designer. Sr. Galván returned to Spain last September and José Rodríguez Rodríguez, Spanish journalist and Manila old-timer, has taken over as the new director.