“Once upon a time, your host applied to a graduate school and requested that he be considered for a position teaching Spanish as part of the aid package. He then discovered that they had a particularly effective strategy for figuring out just how good his Spanish really was: one morning, he received a call which…
Anecdotal, from some film or other: Teacher: Agua, guoter. Lola: Agua, guoter. Y esto de guoter, ¿cómo se escribe? Teacher: W-A-T-E-R, váter. Lola: ¡Qué guarrada!, ¿cómo pueden bebérsela?
Hilaridad is increasingly ilaridad, while partner import hello is still universally jota-ised as jelo. Has this got anything to do with the availability of undubbed Ali G?
I’m unreliably informed that Real Zaragoza star Ewerthon Henrique de Souza’s dad couldn’t spell Everton rather than Erewhon. Not that anyone gives a feck, but by all means keep the tips flowing.
First encounter with this one was a few weeks ago when a Dutch-speaking client insisted I use it in some insurance copy. When I declined, he googled it and came up with the following supporting ghit: “And since the betas apparently go out to people who aren’t familiar with the fucking Tribes universe while I’m…
Ñ is the cultural supplement of the Argentine daily, Clarín (here, via A&C, attacking norms established by the Spanish Royal Academy for a language spoken in 20 countries). Someone told me the other day that I should look up some numbers of a 40s Falangist publication called Y. Happy I was, till I discovered its…
Lovely phrase, something along the lines of “lavish in life, eager in death”, used here to describe the Spanish, although you will doubtless recall similar elsewhere. It’s from the discourse by the Count of Portalegre which rounds off the BBG edition of Guerra de Granada, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza‘s chronicle of the disastrous rural uprisings…