Can Peppa Pig, the bilingual television babysitter, also teach old gringos Spanish?

When I first heard Cuencano parents talking about Peppa Pig, I thought they were recommending a new cut of pork at the mercado: something to go with mote pillo and a side of ají.

But no, Peppa Pig (or La Cerdita Peppa in Spanish) is not a dish of spiced pork, she is a cartoon piglet with a very active social life and an English accent sharper than a Cusqueñan hat brim.

Peppa lives with her family in a bright yellow house with a red roof on top of a green hill. It has two floors it seems, an upstairs for bedrooms and a downstairs where Daddy Pig reads his newspaper and Mummy Pig keeps the kitchen under control.

From the outside, it looks impossibly small to contain all the chaos, but somehow it accommodates birthday parties, giant spaghetti dinners, and the occasional dinosaur invasion.

The family itself is a tidy unit: Daddy Pig, who is an architect, is a gentle soul with a large waistline, bristly whiskers, and a worrying habit of “fixing things” that fall apart immediately afterward; George, Peppa’s little brother, who communicates almost exclusively through the word “Dinosaur!” and often has sudden tearful outbursts — behaviour that has led more than one adult viewer to wonder if he might be somewhere on the autism spectrum; and Mummy Pig who is sensible, efficient, and recently a new mother again. Fortunately, it was only a singleton piglet otherwise she might have been overwhelmed.

The circle of friends is a veritable Noah’s Ark of species. Suzy Sheep is the loyal best friend, Pedro Pony is always late, Candy Cat makes the occasional cameo, and Danny Dog is exactly as bouncy as you’d expect. Edmond Elephant is the clever clogs of the bunch and often pipes up with arcane facts that leave the rest of the menagerie blinking.

And then there’s Mr. Fox, a smooth-talking salesman who can procure anything from vacuum cleaners to violins. Whether or not he should be left alone with young piglets is another matter entirely.

Mrs. Rabbit deserves her own statue outside the Parque Calderón. Not content with one job, she does them all: supermarket cashier, museum guide, ice cream seller, helicopter paramedic and pilot. In Cuenca terms, she’d be running a tienda at Feria Libre, piloting a tranvía, and working the night shift in the hospital — all before breakfast.

Possibly her promiscuous working life compensates for fertility problems, as she only seems to have one offspring, Rebecca Rabbit.

The adventures are often ordinary but occasionally surreal. Mummy Pig once went parachuting (I swear this is true, though don’t ask me the episode number).

Peppa and George have had royal encounters, camping trips, and countless birthday parties where Daddy Pig has had to “test” the cake.

Meanwhile, Goldie the goldfish swims silently in her bowl, never speaking a word. If Goldie ever opened her mouth, the fragile wall of cartoon logic would shatter. Better that she just gapes and watches Daddy Pig misread another map.

The brilliance for us here in Cuenca is that hundreds of Peppa Pig episodes are all over YouTube, in both English and Spanish. La Cerdita Peppa is a perfect bilingual tutor: kids can pick up words while laughing at muddy puddles, and adults can study Mrs. Rabbit’s emergency medical vocabulary under the noble excuse of “language learning.”

A few episodes in Spanish, a few in English, and before you know it you’re ordering cuy with flawless pronunciation.

In fact, across the United States there have been reports of toddlers who, after long hours being babysat by Peppa Pig, began speaking with little English accents complete with vocabulary like “torch” instead of “flashlight” and “holiday” instead of “vacation.”

Some American parents were horrified and others delighted. It may be the first case of children acquiring a foreign language not in school but from a bossy piglet who loves jumping in muddy puddles.

If Peppa and her friends can teach English children Spanish and Spanish children English, perhaps there’s hope for us adults too, though I doubt we’ll ever be able to out-trumpet Edmond Elephant’s clever-clogs vocabulary.

Oink!