I guess Esterella is a play on Esther, as in Lambrechts, and the Spanish estrella, star. The obvious connection is in the Sephardi community, but it would be interesting to know why Russian immigrant Charly Schleimovitz thought this stage name would work for his client and wife, the Antwerp nightingale, the Belgian Zarah Leander. Godzjumenas…
Cool post by Carlos Ferrero on linguistic maps of Spain and Portugal that appear arbitrary or ideologically driven. Power, preference and politics in the linguistic mapping of the Romania: representations of reality or the reality of geolinguistic representation?, Erin M Halm’s UPenn dissertation, looks like a really interesting followup. Unfortunately the download is USD37.
Interesting bit in a NYT review of David Crystal’s The Fight For English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot, and Left (via Conversational Reading): Crystal is … especially good on the Middle Ages. When printing came to Britain in 1400, English was a merry old mess. Choices had to be made, he says, and typesetters were…
I’ve been out and about rather a lot recently, so warm thanks to MM for pointing out a post by Carlos Ferrero at Las palabras son pistolas cargadas on new(-ish) translation blogs. The most interesting one from my perspective is the Arab-Spanish Turjuman árabe, whose contents include a link by Khaled Musa to the online…
Margaret of Fürth comments on the online edition of Ronald McIntosh and David Fawthrop’s A discussion of the changing principles of word division, now implemented by computers, in British English and American English, with notes on hyphenation of 39 other languages, which is even longer than its title. The notes on hyphenation in Spanish observe…
Sez Florica from Pitesti: You cannot pretend you are a real witch if you cannot help a businessman get the European Union funds he wants. For example, only the other day I had a young businessman who came to me with his papers applying for European funds. I spread the cards on his documents, said…
Whoever runs Fabirol‘s website tells us on a page re a museum near Zaragoza called La casa del gaitero, Bagpiper House in corporate speak, that in Aragon gaitero can be used to describe any popular musician. What would an equivalent lowest-common-denominator term be in the English-speaking world? “Artiste” misses the instrument component and, frequently, the…
Here, via Carlos Ferrero, thanks to MM. (Is paint-bombing and slogan-daubing terrorism? Yes, when it’s part of the systematic campaign of violence and intimidation being conducted by regional nationalists in Spain with the goal of disenfranchising other shades of opinion.)
Does the principle that “If it’s too important to you, then you’ll mess it up” mean that enthusiastic believers should be advised to refrain from Bible translation? If not, would it be cool to have them translate your wife’s diary? Since when have Irishmen taken beatings from mullet?
A 76-year-old Malay Muslim woman from southern Thailand who got on the wrong bus 25 years ago and ended up living at the other end of the country has been reunited with her family, officials and domestic media said on Tuesday.