Once again we stray from the straight and narrow of our mission onto the great scrubby heath of linguistic hilarity. The double airco and window/door configuration here clearly forms an elephant’s eyes and trunk, suggesting a menagerie shared with the one-eyed trouser-snake, but this is an MOR clothing retailer in Manresa, not a boutique dedicated…
Wine-buff Víctor de la Serna (via Carlos Ferrero) has nailed Domecq Bodegas for an amusing slip on the otherwise impeccable site, “When did you born?” I haven’t really looked for literary or scientific evidence, and I’m pretty ignorant of non-me dialectal forms, but I’d hazard that this form is actually quite common among some groups…
In a world of staggeringly incompetent amateurs the website of Textiles Athenea is just run-of-the-mill hound-dog, so I wouldn’t even mention it if someone hadn’t wept an empathic tear at a job ad of theirs that came flashing past. Hmm, to be the sparkling hub of their textile pattern design, collection formation and trend spotting…
Chez Lexicool, via MM, Katia, who, using Facebook in English, described herself as being in a civil union with Juan, only to have a lucky escape from her mother-in-law, who, using Facebook in Spanish, had understood that this was in some sense a homosexual union, and was just about to order some educational literature from…
Peter Harvey has discovered two spacious rooms, lightly high in the Alhambra. “Room of the beds” is the literal translation of “Sala de las camas,” which must lead not a few visitors to giggle and wonder what the difference is between a “room of the beds” and a bedroom. Traditional use in English for such…
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…
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.…
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…