The local cinema is showing Polanski’s The Ghost Writer and this is the poster advertising the film: 
You’ll notice that the title has been translated into Spanish as El Escritor – The Writer. I wonder whether that’s because the word used for a “ghost writer” is negro.
Continue reading “pc or not pc”
Category: spanish
time flies
And there are too many things need doing for me to write much, so I’ll settle for a picture of this rather splendid creature I found in the garden this morning.
I suppose it’s a kind of tiger moth. (I should have stuck a ruler in the picture as an indication of scale, of course, but it must have been something over an inch long.) Its impressive camouflage would have been marginally more effective if it had chosen the cream painted wall for its morning siesta.
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sinful snacking
I’ve already commented on how fond the Spanish are of the genitivo sajón so I suppose the strange and entirely inappropriate little green leaf in the logo of this packet of “snatt’s” isn’t really surprising.
Still, it does make me wonder once again who does the copy writing and design for Spanish advertising agencies.
I imagine the brand name “snatt’s” is someone’s interpretation of the sound of the English word “snacks”. But what purpose does the leaf serve?
If it’s purely a design element, surely it could have been put somewhere where it wasn’t likely to be mistaken for an apostrophe? Or did the company chairman think that an apostrophe added a sophisticated English twist to the name?
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use your loaf
Bread is important in Spain. Not what I’d call good, but important, all the same.
The two loaves in the picture look tempting, but they are both basically cotton-wool-style white bread. The one on the left, bought as un pan, will be easier to cut in a couple of days, and will make quite decent toast. At first sight, a foreigner may think the one on the right – una barra – will be like a French baguette. They’d be wrong. It’s pretty much the standard tasteless Spanish loaf, though the supermarket version tends to be rather cheaper and even more like cardboard than the ones I buy in the panadería.
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april
While others bundle and bunch
under umbrellas, shrug
into pak-a-macs and hunch deep
into their collars, their faces
scrunched, gurning
against the elements, she
pokes tongues
at raindrops and laughs
glitter from her hair.
In the UK we are used to hearing that “April showers bring May flowers”, an expression that apparently can be traced to its earliest known form – Continue reading “april”
don't confuse the narrator 