I’d like to see Guus Hiddink take over England asap, but then I was supporting Mark Oaten (go on, get me one for my birthday!) to run the Lib Dems until he started chasing the England job, leaving Boris Johnson as the LDs’ only potentially electable leader. (Apparently the Koreans gave Guus a villa on…
If I were a bit smarter I’d have tried a couple of alternative spellings before posting this. There’s a good chapter by Anthony Reid dealing among others with Sakender in Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting and Reflecting on the Encounters Between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Modern Era (ed Stuart B Schwartz) in which…
The other day I serendipited upon a review in Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië (1853) of Abraham Benjamin Cohen Stuart‘s translation of what sounds like an absolutely brilliant Javanese epic poem dealing with the life and loves of one Baron Sakendher, Geschiedenis van Baron Sakendher. Een Javaansch verhaal van vertaling, aanteekeningen…
These (from Carlos Westendorp Plaza) are OK: Autodate – type of potatoes Queque – cake Quineguar/chineguar – King Edward potatoes (the d -> g swap is interesting; it reminds me of some Andalusian dialects in which you get b -> g (abuelo -> aguelo) etc And this is a killer: Cambuyonero – Someone who trades…
Amando de Miguel says that Aura Grandal says that people in Ferrol, Galicia call policemen “chepas”, and that this derives from “shepherds”, which is what British engineers called the watchmen in the naval arsenals. I’m going to believe it, whether I do or not.
Someone has been trying recently & kindly to hammer into my thick skull the nature and depth of early Irish ties with Iberia. Here’s a bleeding chunk from a piece called The City of the Tribes: Italian Memories in an Irish Port in a recently cited James Joyce anthology (Occasional, Critical, and Political Writings): The…
In an update, even more Pelorus boato-photos here. This is getting ridiculous, because there’s a rumour going round that the guy may be going to use Le Grand Bleu (354′) as a frigging supply vessel for the Pelorus (377′). The latter is apparently now heading back to Monte Carlo, which will cheer up Shirley Bassey…
We knew Georgia was in trouble, but it’s worse than we thought, if we are to believe this article from News24.com: Georgia, Adjara – Militia in Georgia’s renegade province of Adjara on Sunday blew up the main bridges linking it to Tbilisi as Georgian warships circled overhead in a new escalation of violence in the…
The elderly Galician in the seafood bar down the street is essentially a demand side economist. Octopus? No problem. Customers? Never been worse. Although he doesn’t know why, he’s basically right about the first bit. Here’s a snapshot of why that is: The Moroccan catch fell from 107,000 tonnes in 2000 through 96,000 in 2001…