Francesc Peirón and his Vanguardia editors don’t know the name of the world’s most famous stock market index. “Down Jones” is used jokingly for “Dow Jones” when the market is falling (it’s up this morning) and in suppressing the Legitimate National Aspirations of the Welsh Race (we have none).
Carlos Muñoz of the Institut Libre Marie Haps in Brussels laments (a) the decline in prestige and airtime within Spain suffered by the standard, educated, Madrilenian accent of Spanish, and (b) the lack of phonetic consistency exhibited by model speakers of the more specifically regional accents which have to a certain extent replaced it. He…
español Vilafranca is a quiet country town, but the weekly market attracts an interesting range of pickpockets. Hopefully numbers will increase as the works in the main square are completed and the recession begins to bite. This lady put her hand into S’s pocket at a vegetable stall: She works with another Latin American women…
Barcelona. Shop no 1 is closed at 11:30, well within its normal opening hours. The iron street blinds are down and there’s no message posted, so I walk across town to shop no 2. Yes, no problem, pay now and we’ll confirm the delivery date in a moment. The call comes a couple of hours…
It now seems that Iceland has defaulted, apparently believing Russia will be foolish enough to attempt to protect what’s left of its cod against ETA trawlers from Bilbao. Spain is not going down that road, at least not yet, but one of the more-quoted papers on the subject (De Paoli, Hoggarth & Saporta, Cost of…
Spelled-out evidence suggesting that Expansión, La Vanguardia and various other established Spanish newspapers’ international financial experts may actually know uck all about their subject.
Siegfried Anton den Boer/Siegfried Andre Den Boer Kramer/Anthony van den Boer/Tony Ronald/Tonny Ronald etc, born Arnhem 1941/1943/1944, permanently resident in Barcelona from 1959/1960, recording nevertheless in Holland in Dutch and German until 1963, either has the best or the worst memory in the world. Here’s his 1971 summer hit, Help!, in Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXzQrIdR0xw … and…
And, judging by the envious comments on Facebook, possibly the first in Southeast Asia: One of the mysteries of globalisation is that I spend quite a lot of time at the moment writing for Chinese exporters. The first foreign I learnt as a kid was fragments of Cantonese. Maybe I’ll get a chance to check…
Shop deliveries free on foot in Leeds LS1-8 & LS13. Dismiss