Hi
I don’t think that 90% of the people in Pakistan would know what “calling collect” means because here we cannot call anyone collect! :shock: I have two questions to ask of you people!
1- Can you call collect in your country?
2- If yes, then is the person who is called obliged (forced) to take the call? Doesn’t the person who is calling collect feel embarrassed while doing so and more embarrassed if the other person refuses to take the call!?
Tom
Hi Tom,
It’s the kind of thing your children do to you but you are told where the call is coming from and who is calling. In the UK this is called a ‘reverse charges call’.
A
Hi Tom
Yes, you can “call someone collect” in the US and I agree with Alan that it’s most likely to be a situation in which kids are calling their parents. The person called does not have to accept the call, but parents generally accept that sort of call… whether they want to or not. 
Amy
We can do that in Spain, too, and it’s called ‘llamadas a cobro revertido’. It’s not something we normally do, however, unless really, really pressed for money, and then only with close friends or relatives, I suppose.
cobro – not cuesta?
or carga?
Yes, ‘cobro’ = payment.
Cuesta = it costs (from the verb ‘costar’): eso cuesta un ojo de la cara – it costs an arm and a leg (literally: it costs an eye from the face!).
Carga = load
ahhhh
right
Cuanto cuesta la hamburguesa?
For whatever reason I figured that “carga” would be a cognate.
Well, you’re partly right, it is a cognate of ‘charge’ in the military and electric sense of the word. Come to think of it, it can also mean ‘tax’, though the word ‘impuesto’ is more common.
thank you, conchita
This is my “learnin’” history of Spanish:
I was able to get around Cancun fairly well. I am admittedly rusty. hehe
And not knowing how to do the darn accents/tildes is bugging me.
OH, almost forgot:
You know how closely related Spanish and Italian are… well I was in Modena, Italy one night – I’d gone out to get a beer and ended up getting lost. It was neat – Italians could understand roughly 50% of my Spanish, or my version of Spanish anyway, as I “asked” for “directions” (I use those terms loosely… I think that’s what I was requesting).
I was making some progress, but was admittedly still lost, when I ran into a Jamaican who knew where my address was, and spoke English… and I made my way back. lol
I really feel for you, Tom! 
You might find some helpful advice here:
parker.org/Spanish/accent_guide.htm
Yes, but there’re also some funny false friends between the two:
Their word for ‘butter’, ‘burro’, means ‘donkey’ in Spanish, and ‘caldo’ (‘cold’) is ‘broth’ in Spanish, for example!
yeah, lol
also:
Spanish:
Andar = To walk
Ir = To go
Italian (at least how they used them):
*Infinitive Andar = To go
*Infinitive Ir = To walk
Examples (in action):
Spanish:
Vamos = Let’s go
Andamos = Let’s walk
Italian:
Viamo = Let’s walk
Andiamo = Let’s go
lol