Languages, mankind, empires, the family – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

Kalebeul, voice of the voiceless

Restores the power of speech to stricken Andalusians.

Why less democracy is better for Europe

Peter Mandelson on how fortunate we are that the European Commission is unelected, remote, unaccountable, and a major bureaucracy.

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?

Blogger closed down my favourite copyright violation site!

Hasta luego Edgar León, but what’s the real solution?

Few Venezuelan sailors do not know las Tetas de María Guevara. Photo <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Free_Documentation_License'>GNU</a> by <a href='http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Wilfredor'>Wilfredo Rodríguez</a>

The right and the wrong type of snow, according to Avicenna, Aristotle and Plutarch

With an excerpt from a plea for more state funding by the Bostonian Western Rail-road, in which we are given to understand that snow is not necessarily a bad thing.

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.

A fragment from Italo Calvino’s quasi-17th century folk romance, Il visconte dimezzato/The cloven viscount, uses storks as a portent of battle. Several unconnected 2nd century Greek accounts might appear to do the same, perhaps particularly if one’s a lazy sod and doesn’t read anything but scraps of stuff on Google Books.