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Our travel book quips, " so you're worried about travelling to Barecelona, and you dont speak Spanish? Don't worry, no one else does either..." This turns out not to be true, but it does totally confound transactional Spanish, throwing in wierd words. It turns out that Catalan, the language of the region, is spoken in norhteastern Spain, southeastern France, the islands off the coast, and in a really little bit of Italy. The trick is, Catalan is closest to Italian, even though it looks like a cross between French and Spanish. We had a little conversation about all of this with two old guys with two old cats in a little smoky storefront, but I can't say I understood a word of it. For those of you out there keeping score, Catalan has brought us the roots of such English word gems as "barracks," and "mayonaise." The last one blows me away.