Alex Mayrhofer’s gazetteer, used in the previous post, has a cool homophone feature which helps you distinguish between, for example, Swanmore, Hampshire (what’s with the Aireborough, Alex?), UK and SÄwan Maira, Pakistan. Impressive as the South Downs may seem after a heavy night, Alex’s 3D landscaping reminds one that pub crawls on the North West…
Apparently (via Onze Taal) a Serbian village is changing its name from Smrdić (“old and dirty”) to Izvor (“spring”). Said Smilja Kostic: “All the young people used to leave the village because they were ashamed to live in a place with such a name.” This seems to me dubious reasoning: despite its tempting name, there…
Peru’s trying to extradite him from Chile for “falsedad ideologica”, which I guess you could translate as “ideological insincerity”. He’s a politician, for xrissake.
Silly me: I thought you were meant to paint fascist graffiti on fascist memorials. There must be some branding issue. (The definition I use is roughly the same as the American Heritage one: statist + nationalist + anticonstitutionalist.)
Franco Alemán points out that Google (correctly) translates “Fidel Castro” as “Fidel I castrate”. No less sensationally, it turns out that “Fidel” is actually a French acronym for “Fichier informatique départemental pour études locales”, “Departmental computing file for local studies”.
Do head-to-heads on Spanish words and you’ll find that the page count at Google Print averages around 30% more than the word count over at CORDE. The content and search functionality are different, but it’s another nail in the coffin of the Real Academia Española.
Meteoclimatic.com is a brilliant site which provides real-time data from amateur weather stations across Spain and its various dangly bits. I particularly like the historic feature (hit Estaciones then a province, and you’ll see a calendar below the fold; navigate back in time using the arrows on the right). Compare it with the miserable crap…
As a sideline (no mainline yet) I write musical arrangements, principally for big band and for choir. Problem: piracy. Tonight trade war looms with China (I’ll probably have a curry instead): a reliable source tells me that a Shanghai choir is using my version of ET Mensah’s Tea samba.