language use & abuse – Page 10 – don't confuse the narrator

automatic writing

Yesterday, I signed off an email to a colleague with the Spanish phrase que te sea leve. It seemed appropriate, knowing that the summer is upon us, compañeros de trabajo are off on holiday and teams that are stretched at the best of times are now at snapping point.

bare bone on bare earth — Let the earth lie light...

“Que te sea leve” ~ “may it (life) be light for you.”

I like the phrase, but had no idea of its derivation.

Fortunately, despite the absence of colleagues, there is usually time for an exchange of ideas and information, and he pointed out that this is more or less what the Romans put on the tombstones of loved ones:

Sic tibi terra levis. ~ Let the earth lie light upon you.

What a lovely phrase.

Still, that’s all rather incidental to this post, which was prompted by the actual physical act of typing que te sea leve, rather than by its meaning.
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Sound reasoning

A couple of weeks ago, on the Tantamount Words blog, I wrote about the USA Spelling Bee and commented about how a knowledge of the etymology of a word can help with spelling, particularly in a language like English where many different languages have contributed to the vocabulary.

Often, knowing how a word is pronounced is little help when it comes to writing it, but I personally don’t favour spelling reform as the written form can give us all sorts of clues about word families and relationships.
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political ambiguity

It’s the first time in decades that I’ve been in the UK for a general election, and I’m finding all this uncertainty absolutely fascinating. Maybe the fact I don’t have to live with the aftermath – at least not as a resident – helps.

I liked this quote from the BBC lunchtime television news today:

[The Liberal Democrats] must decide who they want to govern.

In normal speech, at least, that is delightfully ambiguous, and conjures the idea of the Lib Dems keeping their coalition partners, whichever party they might be, on a very short leash.

Technically, that interpretation probably demands the use of “whom”, but how many of Britain’s electorate would distinguish the grammatical forms?

found wanting

Poster (text - Yes, we want) — And apparently, we need (to), too

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reviewing the translation of a novel with the author. Time and again, we’ve come up against what she sees as limitations in the English language.

One of the biggest problem has been with words that are gender non-specific. With a word like “saint”, “patient” or “teacher” it’s unclear whether it refers to male or female, whereas in Spanish you have the pairs santa/santo, profesor/profesora, and with words like paciente it’s simply a question of changing the gender of the article: el paciente/la paciente.
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using language

I hadn’t realised that the library in Navarredonda was following a long and honourable Spanish tradition with their sign listing their rules and regulations for behaviour.

Still, the tile in the photograph was spotted embedded in the wall outside a bar in Pedro Bernardo and does seem to be a genuine antique.

Presumably, though, the residents don’t want visitors to think that they are quite so stuck in the past as a ban on blasphemy and the image of a pony parked in the bull ring might lead you to believe. At least, I assume that’s why they felt the need to add the small explanatory tile that reads, “curiosidad antigua”.
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