Languages – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

Alboraya Council’s tinker books

The reforms of the Council of Trent led to parishes registering in five books–quinque libri–the baptisms, confirmations, communions, marriages, deaths and excommunications celebrated there. Quinquilleros, hojalateros and other itinerant pot-breakers and -menders were nominally Catholic but frowned on and frequently persecuted by the establishment, so it’s good to see the Ajuntament de Alboraya drawing them…

Modifications to Slovak language law

Bulbul on spasmodic change in another ethno-polity which gets a kick from auto-strangulation. At least Mishima didn’t manage to drag the whole of Japanese society into his heroic belly-op.

¡Tú imitas tan bien a los animales! ¿No serás … aztor?

A phonological curiosity from coastal Cantabria, with speculation as to the supernatural powers of María Teresa Fernández de la Vega.

Spanish vice-premier María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, laser-eyed owl-bat bird?<br />(Photo CC Agência Brasil via <a href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:De_la_Vega2.JPG'>Wikimedia Commons</a>.)

Bikini vs vikini

Spelling controversies to overtake music/games/dating/porn as biggest online revenue generator?

Nick Clegg’s Spanish

Includes several therapeutic tongue-twisters.

Competing Amazigh and Arabic etymologies of “beur”

And “beurette,” of course, this being the Year of Zahia Dehar, who sounds like she may escape from being shagged up the bum by Pierre Woodman.

Beurettes with their backs against the wall in Aytré, Poitou-Charentes, CC by <a href='http://www.flickr.com/photos/llansades/4029997524/'>Thierry Llansades</a>.

Kalebeul, voice of the voiceless

Restores the power of speech to stricken Andalusians.

Bloody Galicians

But what was Rosa Díez actually trying to say before she so expertly inserted foot into mouth?

Born, not made

The Spanish, making progress with a backlog of untranslated English snowclones?

Galen: not nuts

Galen is an indispensable early source for historians of the walnut, the hazelnut, the testicle, and so forth, but this does not explain why galen is used in Swedish to describe a disturbed person.