English proficiency of the Spanish relative to other nations

La Información’s reporter says that this publication by Education First, a teaching multinational with an interest in making target clients nervous, shows that of the European countries examined, only the Russians and Turks had worse English skills than the Spanish. He then left to finish his primary school geography class, and so didn’t have time…

Chino de los mandados = errand boy

Chinese because of his servility and/or size, or a genuine Indiana Jonesian Short Round? From Bogota, and perhaps relatively recent, but here (it reappeared) is Walter Silva from distant Casanare singing a sentimental but memorable ditty about how his mum etc looked after him when the store wouldn’t put the groceries on the tab. Can…

The Alhambra as the opening titles from Mission Impossible

1966, and here’s series 1, episode 1 of the Strine Bond: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4Lh6i9096Q Let’s rewrite that: Good morning, Mr. Irving, Your mission, Washington, should you decide to accept it, is to compile a series of cultural and historical sketches laying the foundations for tourism policy in Granada and to a considerable extent in Spain in general.…

La lengua secreta de los cazadores

–¿Cómo se llama un cerdo silvestre que acaba de salir del bosque? –¡Jaballí! Not one of mine. If you prefer your animal tame and stuffed, Lenox has a bull’s head for you. I almost acquired one from a bar that was closing down, but there were parasites crawling out of its orifices.

Interchangeability of nominative and genitive forms of Spanish patronymics?

I’m thinking of examples like Álvarez/Álvaro, Alves/ Alves, Benítez/Benito, Díaz/Diego, Domínguez/Domingo, Fernández/Fernando, Giménez/Ximeno, Gómez/Guillermo, González/Gonzalo, Gutiérrez/Gutierre, Henríquez/Henrique, Ibáñez/Juan, Juánez/Juan, López/Lope, Márquez/Marco, Martínez/Martín, Menéndez/Menendo, Muñoz/Muño, Núñez/Nuño, Ordóñez/Ordoño, Ortiz/Ortún, Peláez/Pelayo, Pérez/Pere, Ramírez/Ramiro, Rodríguez/Rodrigo, Ruiz/Ruy, Sánchez/Sancho, Suárez/Suero, Vázquez/Vasco, Velázquez/Velasco.

Is Spain a massive nihilist literary experiment?

Lenox comments on Almería’s latest tourism whizz: the incomprehensible in pursuit of the inexistent, perhaps. For some reason this recalled Milorad Pavić’s Dictionary of the Khazars, a wearisome metaphor for the failure of Serbia, which I wouldn’t necessarily recommend – I can’t even remember whether I was given the male or the female edition. Some…

Vitoria, golfing Mecca, or Golgotha of the ecologists/indignados?

Carlos links to an interesting story about the sodomy committed on Vitoria’s new slogan by some no doubt well-paid functionary, “donde el verde es capital” becoming, word for word, “where the green is capital.” I think we can all agree that, in a miserable start to their meaningless year as European Green Capital, they have…

Festina’s Lotus range: watches for people too stupid to need them

We are too smart to buy this crap off Festina, because we happen to know that according to Maya prophecy on December 21 2012 we will be so smoothly and swimmingly plugged into the Earth’s electromagnetic battery that all our timepieces will explode and we’ll need to buy new ones. Neither the copywriter, nor the…