Dictionaries source the Spanish word guay (current meaning: cool/super/excellent/smashing) back to an (Arab) cry, ay. This never makes any kind of sense to me, since the latter is used to signal woe, grief and all manner of misery. Where did the current guay come from, and how (if at all) did this reversal of meaning…
Transblawg posts re the adaptation of the language used in British novels for the American market and vice versa. This subject also occasionally exercises John of Iberian Notes (2003/10/17, for example), who thinks that it’s time we Brits started caring again about the eccentric pastimes of folk who were so very rude to us only…
“I shot the serif!” said the Spanish Radio 3 announcer, and Mr Clapton obligingly started clattering away at the press. Marshall McLuhan once observed that the new time sense of typographic man is cinematic, sequential and pictorial. I don’t know what the hell that means, and it certainly hasn’t helped me figure out whether Klingon…