Spanish telecom

Xavi Caballé’s got an excellent pic of an Auna-Menta box in Terrassa. Now you call Jesús in El Papiol, but it wasn’t always like this.

More chavales

Re chav, here From a lexicon of flamenco song terms derived from Caló and thieves’ dialects (germanías):

Damn Arabs

Savage Minds links to The Insurrection in Mesopotamia, 1920 by Lieutenant-General Sir Aylmer L Haldane, GCMG, KCB, DSO, author of How we escaped from Pretoria and A brigade of the old army. It’s almost as entertaining as Gertrude Bell and includes gems like the following two, taken from Appendix IX – Notes on modern Arab…

Catalan in Europe

I take it Arcadi Espada is joking: We have obtained an impressive victory: citizens who write to European organisations in Catalan will have to send their letter to the Secretary of State for European Affairs, who will send to Brussels the text in Catalan and a copy in Spanish. The answer from Europe will be…

“Whoreson Villepin”

Vincent Pinte, commenting at Technologies du Langage, suggests that the “de” between the “Dominique” and the “Villepin” that denominate France’s deranged and disastrous prime minister need not necessarily evidence noble origins. Apparently–I certainly wouldn’t know–medieval prostitutes customarily used only one name, their first, and were subsequently assigned surnames on the basis of their location, eg…