Miguel de Cervantes – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

c(h)/qu => k and early/mobile spanish/italian writing

Tearing myself away from puffing the undoubted pleasures of wines of the Penedès for a moment, I would point out that mediaeval Romance languages constitute another possible origin of the use of k- instead of c- or qu- by naughty boys and girls. Here’s a brief and highly speculative sequence of events that I hope…

The best of all possible donkeys

Although Catalonia has donkeys rather as the Soviet Union used to have coalminers, the nation’s poets have tended to avoid the devil’s walking parody on all four-footed things – that’s if we exclude Mr Cervantes and his great chivalric hero, Donkey Hotee. (Am I the only person who didn’t know that Donkey Kong is so-called…