When I first moved to Spain, I found that many Spanish words are similar to high-register Latin-root words in English. It was easy to start cruising along, thinking this language learning wasn’t so bad after all, when suddenly I’d be brought up short by something completely unexpected.
Once I’d learned to drop my aitches – easy enough for an Essex gir! – I could cope with hotel and hostal, but staying in a pensión was somewhat less intuitive.
Still, I saw that pensión could have a very different meaning in Spanish from the English “pension”, and I soon realised that retirarse was more likely “withdraw” than retire.
Even so, I was altogether unprepared for the fact that “retirement” translates as jubilación.
Sure, not having to work any more might be cause for celebration, but it seems a little blatant to sound quite so gloriously jubilant about it in a formal context.
But when you live with the words, you eventually start to take them for granted. So I was taken aback to see a poster advertising pension plans in the bank the other day that declared in no uncertain terms:
jubilación es una palabra que proviene del latín jubilare que significa “gritar de alegría“
It makes me wonder if I could use all those dreadful puns and word games I’ve been playing between the two languages to get me a good job as a copy writer.
don't confuse the narrator 