Towards the end of part 2 of Quixote, Sancho Panza is hailed by a German pilgrim who turns out to be Ricote, a Morisco from Sancho’s village. Ricote was driven out of Spain by religious persecution and has spent his exile in France, Italy, and Germany, near Augsburg, where I found we might live with…
There’s a rather silly suggestion here (via Onze Taal) to the effect that, with English reasonably close to becoming the only EU working language, it’s about time the UK started paying for everyone else to learn English. I find this a weak argument: with the French Eurocracy converted to the delights of English, it will…
“A [Manx (via Mithridates)] game in which one boy gave a back as in leap- frog, the other boys then leapt over him four times– fore and aft and from each side—each calling out as he did so, spanish fly. The process was then repeated, varied by the cry ‘tip on the bot, spanish fly,’…
GK Chesterton, The defendant: A Spanish nobleman, when commanded by the King to receive a high-placed and notorious traitor, said: ‘I will receive him in all obedience, and burn down my house afterwards.’ Pepys’ Diary: My Lord told me that among his father’s many old sayings that he had writ in a book or his,…
There’s already been plenty of comment on the determined attempt by Jacques Chirac and other European nationalists to kick themselves once again in the goolies, this time over Google Print’s fiendish plot to Anglicise the world. One of the many fine non-English texts available through GP and so far undiscovered by Mr Chirac is Otto…
There’s a curious note in the part of Alfonso X’s General estoria (ca 1280s) where he’s listing the languages spoken by Japheth’s descendants, sensibly identified early on as Europeans by European bible scholars:
Well it seems that way to me: Now that Saddam-era censorship of movies has lessened, movies with sex scenes and nudity are getting particularly popular in Iraq. Men between the ages of 17-45 are the keenest cinema-goers, although many Iraqis are not happy about these canges. One Baghdad resident complained, “Families can not go to…
I love it when dog owners go on about racial purity: Gammel Dansk Honselhund The origin of this race goes back to around 1710 when for eight generations a man called Morten Bak (who lived in the district of Glenstrup near the cities of Randers and Hobro) crossed gypsy dogs with local farm dogs. So…
Few people know that the 7-storey building (Comte Borrell 223) that fell down this morning housed the local Harley Davidson club. Maybe the workmen weren’t to blame after all.