spanish – Page 34 – don't confuse the narrator

silence in the library

So, what do you go to the library for?

Prohibido gritar, pegar e insultar en la biblioteca — Which still leaves a lot of options.

I think most of us go to read books, refer to works of reference, borrow books to take home, use the computer facilities etc. But it seems that either other people have other motives, or they get a lot more het up and argumentative than I would expect.

That’s the only explanation I can see for the sign displayed in the library at Navarredonda. For those who don’t read Spanish, it says:

IT IS FORBIDDEN
TO SHOUT, HIT OR
INSULT
IN THE LIBRARY

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spanish dates

I enjoy the changed logos that Google offers to commemorate different occasions. They’re usually pretty much the same for the .com and .co.uk versions, but I notice that they don’t always appear if I’m using the Spanish version of the search (google.es).

This morning, however, I find a symbol on the .es version that is not on the English language pages:

The little red icon is so small that it’s hardly identifiable, but zooming in, it clarifies into a votive candle, and the mouse-over text reads “En recuerdo a las víctimas del 11M“.
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por un tubo

Some Spanish and English words, such as tubo and “tube” are clear and indisputable cognates, at least in some contexts. “A tube of toothpaste” is, indeed, un tubo.

But when we talk about the tubería in a season as wet as this winter has been, we’re probably not referring to the internet being a “series of tubes”, but about the waterpipes and whether they will cope with amount of rain that continues to fall.

water pipes overflowing — A series of tubes

possessed

Apostrophes almost always give Spaniards problems. But they – the Spaniards, not the apostrophes – do love the “genitivo sajón”, as they call it, and seldom miss an opportunity to use it, even when, as in the case of the club whose sign this is, it isn’t appropriate.

To be fair, it can be complicated trying to unravel who owns what.
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like a lamb

Well, we’ve reached the end of the month and the expression “February fill dyke” has never seemed more appropriate.

How March is to come in remains to be seen: last night, I thought it was going to come roaring like a lion, but today has been as mild a day as you could wish for. On a walk back from the village at lunch time I saw:

swallows: I don’t know how many it takes to make a summer in Spain, but there were several.
lizards: not the first of the season, but the first time this year that I have seen more than just the one.
a stork circling the church tower.
a bat: I thought for a moment it was another swallow, but there’s no doubt it was a bat, even though it was broad daylight.
a red admiral butterfly: who must have managed to weather the storms and was now enjoying the sunshine

Continue reading “like a lamb”