The name is actually rather interesting. There’s a rule in standard Spanish that says that y is substituted by e before words beginning with i or hi, except when y forms the beginning of an exclamation or question, and except before words beginning with y or hie. However, I’ve never heard of a corresponding rule…
My feedreader’s having problems with diacritics, so LaVa says: El coche de Lady Di pudo haber chocado con otro “veh?culo grande”. Don’t think the Pharaoh of Alexandria’s tried that one yet.
In Ferrol, Galicia, Spain you can get traffic fines annulled by exercising your constitutional right to receive notifications in Spanish instead of the Galician preferred by the local council, which seems to be unable to effect translations.
@ Tecnología obsoleta: Darás lo singular por universal. Ocultarás el trabajo acabado y darás por naturales las mercancías y los textos culturales. Te servirás de falsas analogías. Darás la impresión de objetividad, con el fin de ocultar tu posicionamiento personal. En todo tema de discusión, trazarás cuidadosamente los límites de lo aceptable. En otros términos,…
Tutto Pavarotti was the title of the great man’s best-selling album, but even this proved a linguistic step too far for Spanish audiences. At concerts on the tour he was alarmed to see them rise en masse and chant “Tutto! Tutto!” in the belief that this was his first name.
Manuel Fraga goes into a bar, walks up to a man eating tripe, punches him in the face, and starts eating the tripe himself. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” cries the man. “I paid for that!” “Fuck off,” snarls Fraga, “los callos son míos.” (The Salvador Dalí version of this has a…
Foreign language tutors are quite common in lists of books banned by the Inquisition. Check for example this page in the 1844 Indice general de los libros prohibidos, which records the proscription in 1797 of a French-Spanish commercial correspondence course and of an English-Spanish conversation primer published in 1719 by the Anglican minister in Seville.…
Message received from an intermediary re a service offered elsewhere: “Hla me interesa blah blah blah, si me envias un movil te lamo, gracias blah blah.” Magic LL!
A rebujito is a dry sherry (manzanilla, fino) or occasionally a white wine to which fizz (lemonades, …) has been added, typically in a ratio of 1:2, in order to give you a head-start on the alcohol. This is the lite version of whichever British drink it is that has you knock back a third…