spitalian

So I'm trying to brush up on my Spanish--most people in Ecuador do not speak English. I'll be teaching in English (thank goodness) but when I'm out and about in the city, it will pretty much be all en Espanol. I had four years of Spanish in high school that is slowly making its way to the front of my brain, and I'm pretty good at picking up languages, but I'm having a small problem. First, a little background: last summer, in preparation for my European adventure, I spent a lot of time working on my Italian. Spanish and Italian are closely-related languages--they have similar sounds, and some of the words are very much alike (example: esta and questa.) Therefore, my brain sometimes gets confused, and I end up speaking what I like to call Spitalian. I start out in Spanish, and inevitably throw in a word or two of Italian. or sometimes French, but that's another story. You see, I've have enough of three languages to not be close to fluent in any one of them, but I remember enough from all three to form a complete sentence or two. Whether or not that sentence is all in the same language is another matter. So for now, I am trying to forget the Italian and concentrate on Spanish.