El meu menjar favorit nadalenc és la xirivia rostida en una salsa de bolets. La xirivia és bastant barata aquí, perquè només es dóna a les vaques. En Agricultura elemental española (Madrid, 1933) José Dantín Cereceda va escriure: 410. Chirivía.- La chirivía (Pastinaca sativa L.), con sus dos variedades P. s., var.edulis, y P. S.,…
Sorry, but anyone tell me whether the following William Dunbar quote refers to the long battle by Dorset priests to rid their churches of scrumpy ‘n’ western, to yet another destruction of Leicester City FC’s charity team, or to skirmishes between farmers and those legendary mint tea-crazed monsters? Done is a battell on the dragon…
Most people think that the kermes oak, Quercus coccifera, is actually holly because it’s a prickly evergreen tree that round here doesn’t usually get much bigger than 2m. Cocciferous plants are so-called because they bear berries (coccus + fero), and people used to make cochineal out of what they thought were this plant’s berries. Then…
Ernest Benach, de nieuwe secessionistische voorzitter van het Catalaanse parlement, zei gisteren tijdens zijn maidenspeech: “Wij kunnen beginnen met het schrijven van het draaiboek van de utopie.” Erg toevallig liet de Madrileense minister van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Sport, Pilar del Castillo, dan ook vallen dat ze door wil gaan met het plan – ondersteund door…
The excellent Mr Pullum highlights the attempts of the Plain English Conspiracy to destroy Donald Rumsfeld. There is, of course, nothing wrong with the example for which they awarded Ronald (as La Vanguardia’s Asian correspondent calls him) their Foot in Mouth trophy; indeed, a glance at their list of previous winners suggests that they have…
Good post by Mark Liberman on Language Log: Captain John Dunn, of the Shreveport LA police department, is quoted by CNN as attributing the failure of the speech recognition technology in their new PBX to “Southern drawl and what I call lazy mouth”… Message to Captain Dunn: the fault is in your system’s technology, not…
Some completely useless information: la setmana anglesa (ie a working week that ends at lunch on Saturday) is specified in Article 201 of the constitution (PDF) written by Josep Conangla i Fontanilles and approved by Francesc Macià’s separatists in Havana, Cuba in October 1928. This is possibly the last positive mention of British working practices…