When I first moved to Spain, I found that many Spanish words are similar to high-register Latin-root words in English. It was easy to start cruising along, thinking this language learning wasn’t so bad after all, when suddenly I’d be brought up short by something completely unexpected.
Once I’d learned to drop my aitches – easy enough for an Essex gir! – I could cope with hotel and hostal, but staying in a pensión was somewhat less intuitive.
Continue reading “something to celebrate”
Translating an article on Brazilian beaches, I’ve just learned a new word in Spanish:
carioca.
1. adj. Natural de Río de Janeiro. U. t. c. s.
2. adj. Perteneciente o relativo a esta ciudad del Brasil o a su provincia.
(definition from the Diccionario de la Lengua Española.)
I suppose it’s my lousy accent than makes me connect it to karaoke. It does mean, though, that I should find it relatively easy to remember carioca by picturing the Rio carnival procession all singing karaoke as they dance the samba.
Actually, that’s such a dreadful image that I hope I don’t have much call to talk about the people and activities of Rio in Spanish.
Or, perhaps, a question of numbers.
A headline in today’s El Mundo says that 4,158 million euros has been lost in the last ten years due to political corruption. Except, it being Spanish, it doesn’t say it quite like that:
The Spanish use “million” in the plural after a number, giving phrases like seis millones rather than “six million”. They also use a full stop as the thousands separator and a comma where we use a decimal point.
Continue reading “a number of questions”
This headline has caught my attention:
Whether it was in any way connected with Global Handwashing Day, which fell a few days ago, I don’t know.
It was of course the use of the verb “ring” that caught my eye. I’m pretty sure that even in American English that should be “wring”.
Actually, there was far more to set me thinking in the article, which started off:
Continue reading “it rings a bell”
A photo just sent to me from Barcelona:
In case you can’t guess, it says: “Switch off the telly and read a poem.” Which sounds like a good idea to me.
don't confuse the narrator 