To the extent that I ever was English, I hereby relinquish all claim. I was talking to an Ecuadorian the other day who, having observed the relative position of his country and Spain in the atlas, said he was a native of the Low Countries, los Países Bajos. Ecuador, Holland, anything but England.
Given the interesting record of Basque philology, I wouldn’t be surprised if the early Basque fragments found at Iruña-Veleia (near Vitoria-Gasteiz) turned out to be fakes. The inscription urdin isar, blue/greyish star, certainly leaves me curious. Off-hand I can think of no pre-C18th texts in any Western European language that refer to stars by their…
Ephiphany may, of course, be a play on FIFA; alternatively, it may be telling us something about the state of Sean Ingle’s expenses in Stuttgart, where, according to the Guardian’s man on the spot, the streets are strained yellow.
Conservative ultra-nationalist Josep C Vergés proudly proffers his Big Lie here, slandering that group of ardent defenders of individual rights, Citizens of Catalonia, as filonazi. The English version (scroll down) has “neo-Nazi”, which means something different, but which clearly suffices for a writer so intellectually poverty-stricken that all he can hope for is to insult.
Kate Alcock (via Lingformant): children who were poor at moving their mouths were particularly weak at language skills, while those who were good at these movements had a range of language abilities.
This kind of thing is ridiculous. If someone doesn’t want to play for the national team, fine. Individual liberties shouldn’t just be available to people with whom we happen to agree.