Inaguració (sic)

This missing “u” is quite common in Spanish and Catalan, and it puzzles me because, unusually, the written form doesn’t echo a verbal anomaly: I’ve never heard anyone pronounce the word in this fashion. However, a bit of baracking in pre-WWI emails produces this bit of Madrid vernacular by Carlos Arniches, which I assume not to be a misprint:

Avelino Gracias. (A Benita.) ¿Quie usté inagurarme este chato, Benita?
Benita (Muy huraña y hablando con la boca llena) No, señor; no quiero na.
(El amigo Melquiades o Por la boca muere el pez)

The “Germanes Clarisses” of the short-lived convent/retreat of St Elizabeth at Lavern came from Barcelona, where their institution lives on in the street name, Elisabets, and are apparently now spreading the new orthography in Huesca.

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Comments

  1. That’s how they spell it on Lavern-Subirats railway station too. It’s a dialectal variant.

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