Lola Flores takes English lessons

Anecdotal, from some film or other: Teacher: Agua, guoter. Lola: Agua, guoter. Y esto de guoter, ¿cómo se escribe? Teacher: W-A-T-E-R, váter. Lola: ¡Qué guarrada!, ¿cómo pueden bebérsela?

Ilaridad

Hilaridad is increasingly ilaridad, while partner import hello is still universally jota-ised as jelo. Has this got anything to do with the availability of undubbed Ali G?

Ewerthon

I’m unreliably informed that Real Zaragoza star Ewerthon Henrique de Souza’s dad couldn’t spell Everton rather than Erewhon. Not that anyone gives a feck, but by all means keep the tips flowing.

Home-jacking

First encounter with this one was a few weeks ago when a Dutch-speaking client insisted I use it in some insurance copy. When I declined, he googled it and came up with the following supporting ghit: “And since the betas apparently go out to people who aren’t familiar with the fucking Tribes universe while I’m…

One-letter title

Ñ is the cultural supplement of the Argentine daily, Clarín (here, via A&C, attacking norms established by the Spanish Royal Academy for a language spoken in 20 countries). Someone told me the other day that I should look up some numbers of a 40s Falangist publication called Y. Happy I was, till I discovered its…

Creative cartography

I rather like the idea of going up the M6 one day and finding an elephant where Manchester used to be.

Ignore them and they’ll go away?

Against all the considerable odds, in November the new anti-nationalist party, Ciutadans, won three seats in the regional assembly. So how much time was devoted to it by the nationalist-run regional telly station in January? Six seconds.