Despite Spain’s hot temperatures and the stereotyped passion of the Spanish people, I don’t suppose Spanish is any more eligible to be called the language of love than any other language. It does, however, seem to have a certain facility with affection that is difficult, if not impossible, in English.
The screenshot below is taken from a recent story on the BBC website about the Bárcenas scandal.
Continue reading “hugs and kisses”
Yesterday I gathered together some pictures of bugs that have appeared on the blog over the years. Today, along with a new photo of a recent unidentifed visitor to the house, I thought I’d gather together a few of the fragments of poetry that I’ve posted here on the same broad subject.
It was probably clear when I wrote about one of my very early poems that I’ve been writing about creepy crawlies pretty much since I was old enough to write. However, since I was brought up in the UK, the bugs weren’t as exotic as those featured in yesterday’s picture gallery.
Continue reading “more bugs”
One of the basic foods that I miss when in Spain is bread.
They do eat plenty of bread here, but it’s mostly white – a sort of faux baguette – and has no more flavour than I would expect from cotton wool or cardboard.
Other than the incredibly expensive pan artesano on sale in the village square some Saturdays, there is, however, one type of bread here that I like.
Since I buy it at the cut-price supermarket, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s cooked from frozen dough rather than made on the premises. It’s labelled as pan 6 cereales – six cereal bread. I was a little taken aback, though, when I read the ingredients list more closely: Continue reading “a little bit of this…”
I had an email from Google recently reminding me that they had offered me an AdWords voucher. This sentence caught my eye:
Nos complace comunicarle que hemos ampliado la promoción hasta el 27 junio 2013, lo que significa que aún puede canjear esta oferta y empezar a anunciarse justo a tiempo para la época navideña y el nuevo año.
Translated, that’s:
We are pleased to be able to tell you that we have extended the promotion until 27 June, 2013, which means that you are still in time to take advantage of this offer and start to advertise just in time for the Christmas season and the New Year.
Is that how time works in the information age? Maybe I should install a calendar app and stop relying on dandelion clocks.
“Actual” is one of the words that tends to confuse English-speakers learning Spanish. It’s a “false friend”, connected with reality in English and with current in Spanish.
So, while we might use “the actual situation” to talk about the real state of things, perhaps to correct someone’s misconceptions about what was going on, “la situación actual” would be the current situation.
When my computer tells me there are software actualizaciones disponibles, then, it’s not telling me to “get real”, but that I need to get the latest version – to update to a newer release.
The picture is a screenshot from my phone this week. (Yes, I have the complete works of the Bard on my phone – in English, it’s the phone that talks to me in Spanish; I find the frustration of queuing in the bank can be relieved by dipping into the sonnets, and having a searchable text of the plays is sometimes useful for the crossword.)
The question is, though, do I really want to update Shakespeare?
don't confuse the narrator 