I’ve never really understood what the “urgente” refers to in the title of the “Manual de Español Urgente”. If it was a quick guide, surely it would be manual urgente? So, under what circumstances would we be writing “urgent Spanish” and need to check whether we had the details right?
Continue reading “the RAE gets a round tuit”
Category: headlines
newsworthy
I’ve often wondered whether there are places more or less conducive to life as a poet.
In the film El lado oscuro del corazón, the poet Oliveiro sells his poems on the street corners of Buenos Aires, and he does so with a lot more panache than the ragged beggars who hand out photocopied scraps of hand-written verse in the Madrid metro and from bar to bar around the Spanish capital.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, then, to find that it’s possible to make a living from poetry in la ciudad porteña, although, even there, it seems that doing so is sufficiently surprising that it rates a headline.
Continue reading “newsworthy”
out of his element
Having seen some huge birds of prey recently, which may or may not be Iberian eagles, I have a tendency to watch the skies when out walking.
This morning there was a blob high up which looked vaguely like the waspish ultra-light we often see. Since it was making no noise, and seemed to be hovering rather than going anywhere, it was clear, though, that that wasn’t what it was.
When I got close enought to see, it turned out to be a helium balloon:
This reminded me of a story I’d seen early in the week about medical helium stocks running low while the gas is squandered in balloons.
Continue reading “out of his element”
diplomatic immunity (the silly season II)
When I started to write the previous post, I was actually intending to talk about this ‘news’ story:
Judge pardons King Balthasar for ‘caramelazo’ in the Three Kings cavalcade.
‘Caramelazo.’ What a lovely word. And what a wonderful language Spanish is that it can produce such words: Continue reading “diplomatic immunity (the silly season II)”
poems not bombs
I wrote recently about the automatic responses from WordPress when you publish a blog post, and how one of my posts was greeted with:
In the comments to that post, it was suggested that perhaps this was intended as an imperative, but I assure you I am not responsible for the story that prompted this blog post.
The original headline that is referred to comes from hoy.es and reads: Una poesía provoca una alerta por bomba – ‘poem causes bomb alert’ – a news story from Badajoz earlier this week. If your Spanish is up to it, please go and read the post on quadernodenotas, if not, you’ll have to make do with my hurried – and somewhat ‘creative’ – summary.
Continue reading “poems not bombs”
don't confuse the narrator 