Karaoke (Again)

We enjoyed our karaoke party last night. Everyone started wondering in, starting at 8:00. At 11:00 in the evening, a storm dropped about 4 inches of water, but until that time, the weather was very mild and we spent the first few hours of the evening on the patios. Denise found a little set of "bubbles" for the one child in attendance, who was a real joy, and we all enjoyed watching him blow bubbles and chase after them. It does not take much to amuse us.

Dinner was a mixed success. With help of Karina, serving, and Jorge, my assistant chef, the meal went off without a hitch. But looking back now, I should have provided some meat products. Uruguayans live for meat (myself included) and we thought that a nice salad, pasta with meat sauce and garlic bread would be fine. Nobody was really that excited about the salad, including the women (I should have known that). And since we added some red peppers to the meat sauce (as we always do), some probably thought it was a bit "hot". So next time I think I will have to provide more meat (that works for me). Of course everyone said they enjoyed the meal, but then they are very, very polite. I will publish my public apology for not being a better host and will make it up next time. I will make no apologies for the desserts, however. Jimena provided a delicious strawberry and cream cake and our carrot cake turned out to be fantastic (as good as any I have ever tasted).

The karaoke was a success. Due to the limited time we had to prepare, Denise and I only attempted one Spanish song. I don't think they could have found a faster paced song in all the list. We were horrible, but nobody was keeping score. However, we plan to download some YouTube videos for next time and practice a few of the songs. Fortunately, the video camera was not charged up and we have no record of how bad we did. Take my word for it, though- it was bad.

Eventually at around 2:00 in the morning, everyone wound down and headed on home.

*And Now for Something Completely Different

On a totally different subject, I would like to propose a change in the Spanish language. Now I know that Spanish has been spoken for ages and that there are many Spanish speakers throughout the world. In fact Spanish is the 2nd most popular language in the world, just after Chinese and before English. So I know I am treading on a lot of toes. But here goes.

Why are all nouns in Spanish (and also all romance languages) either masculine or feminine? Now every grammar books states that they are, but not why. Generally words ending in "O" are masculine and those ending in "A" are feminine, except for the many, many exceptions to the rule (and there are lots). Then, to compound the matter, adjectives describing these nouns must match in gender and number. So the question is- WHY! What difference if a house masculine or feminine? A house is a house. Some houses are more masculine than others, but all houses are feminine.

So here is what I propose. Let's just simplify all romance languages (including Spanish) and eliminate the gender preference on nouns. This would make Spanish much easier to speak and draw more people to learn. There are still 322 million people who speak English. Perhaps we can persuade some of them switch. Of course, I don't think Spanish will ever overtake Chinese, with almost a billion speakers, but perhaps more would join the Spanish speaking world if it were easier.

That's just my 2 centavos worth.

*A Monty Python reference