More modern standard Andalusian from El Ciruco: You may fantasise about him blogging here, but someone would have to pay the shelf space for his photo collection.
Le blog du Chì, one year ago, on TF1’s enthusiasm for the apoplectic dwarf who substituted him as opium of the peephole. Another favourite mystification, from El Ciruco:
New translation of Horace here. Conventional version of “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”, “it’s sweet and fitting to die for one’s country” here. (Thanks Jesús)
Apparently we anglocabrones used to think that crossing oneself was prerequisite to being Spanish. Here’s Juan Goytisolo in La Guardia, a short story written in the early 1950s, partly available in GBS: From the window I saw a group of conscripts in parade dress. It was Sunday and the officers’ room was deserted. Its furniture…
Re Erasmus students returning from Spain with an incomprehensible Andalusian accent, here’s Rafael Alberti learning how to tort proper at the dame’s school to which he has been sent following some inappropriate excretion chez the Sisters of Carmel: With Mrs Concha I learnt some Biblical History, being very impressed by Joseph, who was sold by…
Francesc Peirón and his Vanguardia editors don’t know the name of the world’s most famous stock market index. “Down Jones” is used jokingly for “Dow Jones” when the market is falling (it’s up this morning) and in suppressing the Legitimate National Aspirations of the Welsh Race (we have none).
Carlos Muñoz of the Institut Libre Marie Haps in Brussels laments (a) the decline in prestige and airtime within Spain suffered by the standard, educated, Madrilenian accent of Spanish, and (b) the lack of phonetic consistency exhibited by model speakers of the more specifically regional accents which have to a certain extent replaced it. He…
Spelled-out evidence suggesting that Expansión, La Vanguardia and various other established Spanish newspapers’ international financial experts may actually know uck all about their subject.
Someone commented that penícula is probably not a gypsy neologism for a film dealing with the sorrows of life but a childish l/n swap, the fruit of orthographical panic caused by a relatively unfamiliar word. Although we’re clearly dealing with a different level of literary accomplishment, I suggest that Finalcial Times falls into the same…