24/01/2006 – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

Dead Jew snack

Another multipost by Amando de Miguel, in which he suggests that the Galician-Castilian creole of El Bierzo in León appears so close to Catalan simply because both come from Latin. I wonder whether that isn’t underestimating the role of later, intra-peninsular trade in dialect formation. Anyway, the strangest lexical item to turn up so far…

Reasonably priced pit

These Andalusian caves have been for sale for ages. I’d be tempted by the one that needs work, but it’s a bit far away.

Chipper nipper

La Cabota has come up with an ingenious scheme to help mums find children asphalted over by mistake by those speedy Valencian developers: implant chips in their posterior ends.

The Sultan’s organ, and other stuff

There’s a good organ miscellania page here. The Sultan and I anecdote was one of the few useful pieces of information I knew as a child. The Spanish connection lies in the Novelda rock organ, of which more here, and the information that “Spanish organs of the 18th century include a number of mischievous sound…