Bruce Berger

During the early Nineties I became aware that a new word was circulating in La Paz, borrowed from the English. The word was privacy and so fresh was the loan that speakers weren’t sure how it went. Was it privacia or privacidad? There had always been the adjective privado, as in propriedad

A plunge into Spanish at its worst proved, in retrospect, an odd stroke of luck. The year was 1965 and I arrived in Spain ignorant of the language, though fluent in French from six years of study. It was the beginning of Generalisimo Franco’s last

Ever since I started camping in tents, I have enacted a nightly farce. On the advice of desert dwellers who warn that I will step on scorpions or even rattlers if I walk barefoot in the dark, I arrange my shoes by the