Shiteways Cider Company Ltd

The first phoneme of the subject of this splendid story by the Diario de Jerez appears to have colonised the first of the (long defunct) Whiteways Cider Co. Ltd., and they probably deserved it. For Whiteways et al in 1966 sought a ruling allowing them to market as sherry beverages that used the Jerez process…

Dictatorship of the castriat

Don Colin, who has more members than Lingual S&M, wonders whether this is de la abeja rodillas. Just out of interest, here’s the original 1st para: Se encuentra a pie mar, sobre una pequeña península y, durante el siglo I a.C., las gentes que lo habitaron vivían en unas 20 viviendas en forma circular dentro…

Bar or in vitro fertilisation clinic?

Vino en botella = he/she came in bottle, via Carlos from En la luna de Babel, who may also have been the source of the previous post. Meanwhile Mark Liberman is moving in on the French trade in hallucinogens.

Ciutadella – Historical Spanish Since 1965

Tom (who is these days blogging less and twittering more) encountered this proclamation on entering Ciudadela de Menorca, and suggests correctly that it refers to the publication in the Boletín Oficial del Estado of a fascist decree, promoted by education minister Manuel Lora Tamayo and signed off by Franco on Christmas Eve 1964, protecting the…

Singular = peculiar, parte de atrás (?) = back side

Don Colin continues his investigation of Spanish idiomcy and gents’ toilets. Although I have sung with one – flight is complicated for drunken guitarrists in mock-Renaissance robes – I don’t know what “poner una tuna” means. Various types of expert help required. (I get no ghits for “ruiero de combarro.”)

Circulate the spawns to the right, brother

Check out Lenox on the Dump in your Soup School of Translation. The belief that singular and plural, in this case anchovy and anchovies, are qualitatively distinct was also noted by early Soviet linguistic researchers as a barrier to collectivisation in the illiterate hordes of the Great Steppe. I will try to dig out the…