San Fernando, El Salvador
El Salvador’s primary hydroelectric dam creates the country’s largest man-made lake, the Cerrón Grande, north of San Salvador. One can appreciate the size of the lake by viewing it after heading up into the mountains farther to the north, on the road to seldom-visited San Fernando. Continuing on to San Fernando you will find yourself on one of El Salvador’s loveliest backroads which weaves through pine forests. The road ends at the Honduran border, where you will find hotels and a friendly atmosphere.

A sadist — call him Torquemada for one of his probable descendents — must have been among the linguists who, in Charlemagne’s day, gathered to standardize the language of western Iberia. Their agenda was to discuss every word in alphabetical order, but there was discord. For example, those from what would become Portugal wanted to spell a certain verb as gostar, whereas those from what would become Spain favored gustar. So heated did the polemic become that the convention broke up, and the languages themselves began to bifurcate into Portuguese and Castilian.

Question: How often should I bathe my dog? Is there any reason to bathe my cat?

I’m here to tell you, friends, that you can survive any imaginable type of hotel disaster because in the last two years I’ve lived through them all. Names of hotels have been changed to protect the innocent — me.

The winner of the Spanish odd-verb contest might be amanecer, but it hardly exists apart from ¿Cómo amaneciste? The runner up, faltarle, is so common that it belongs on the shortlist of essentials for the lightest of linguistic travelers. Zennish, too: once you have learned one part of it, you often find you have unlearned another in the effort.

Question: Our veterinarian has given me an eye ointment to give to my cat three times a day. What is the best way for me to do this?

English is famous for making verbs of nouns and vice-versa. It might have been George Bernard Shaw — that linguistic Pygmalionizer who wanted to reform English spelling (and so on) — who noted that in English one can thumb a lift or lift a thumb.

In the hoot-fest flick, If It’s Tuesday, This Must be Belgium, an American shoe broker is part of a whirlwind 18-day, nine-country European tour. He escapes long enough to call on an Italian cobbler and, through gesticulation and goodwill, arranges a deal even though they speak no common language. By way of verbalizing, the American simply ads an O to every other word: “We have-o a deal-o? Good-o!” This “pig Italian” interchanges with a “pig Spanish” operating under the same rule, such that our character could have been a wine importer using the same “dialect” with a vintner in Seville.

Generally, one hires a maid or a cook without paying much attention to the accompanying legal obligations. What normally happens is that the employer just considers the individual’s abilities and personal presentation, and doesn’t take time to properly document the new legal relationship.

Question: Our dog died five months ago. I still start to cry when I think about him. My family and some of my friends say that I should “be over it” by now, and that I should get another dog. What do you think?