Life in Culebrón

This post has nothing much to do with language, but the starting point is, nonetheless, a series of videos and podcasts that I’ve recommended before. Ben and Marina, the Anglo-Spanish couple, produce this material under the Notes in Spanish banner. They currently have two strands: one devoted to pure language content, something – Six essential phrases with llevar – and the other is about how to learn – Mistakes are good, Fluency before accuracy – and so on. I like their work, and if you’re trying to learn Spanish and haven’t come across them, it’s well worth a look. Much of it is free, though they’re also happy to sell you additional materials. In their How to get better at Spanish strand, they encourage people to read in Spanish, watch Spanish videos and television, and take every chance to speak. They often repeat the idea that “You learned your native language by listening” – the notion being that if it works for babies, why not for adults? It may be a little simplistic, but it’s fa...

When Spaniards talk about electricity, in the house, they talk about light or at least they use the word whose principal English/Spanish dictionary translation is light. Or take tyre; there is a Spanish word for tyre but the commonplace word translates as wheel. It's pretty normal that a word we'd use in English has a direct translation into Spanish but the Spanish and English usages are different. Sometimes we have one word - slice for instance - whilst Spaniards have several and sometimes it's the other way round. I was talking about this with my online tutor this morning. We got onto how words change with situations. It's unlikely that you would use the word piss directly with your doctor and equally improbable that, down the boozer, you'd talk about urine, micturition or passing water with your mates, though you might use the last if you were talking about a drive through the Lake District. The tutor said that he always found funerary language difficult. The w...

I heard a news item that said that someone had died. The name sounded, on first hearing, to be Mujica but in fact it was Múgica. The first, José Alberto "Pepe" Mujica, is an ex Uruguayan president, who has YouTube video after video overflowing with avuncular socialist wisdom and the other is Enrique Múgica Herzog who was, in Francoist times and during the transition, an important Spanish politician. The Uruguayan I knew in the same way as one knows Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela or Steve Jobs. The Spaniard I didn't know at all. I've mentioned a pal who lives in el Cantón, a small village just over the border into Murcia, a couple of times in the last few blogs. His village seems to be being pretty "solidario" at the moment and they've made a couple of videos ; the together, as a team, we can win sort of videos. One of the clips, the second part of the video, shows people from the village singing along to Resistiré , a song from the 80s which has ...

I was in a bar this morning. The bar is called Arturo but the boss isn't; his name is Salvador or Salva to his friends. Arturo is a nice bar, an ordinary bar. Plenty of Britons use it but we tend to be mid or late morning users. Earlyish morning it's a pretty Spanish environment. Clientele wise it's for anybody and everybody from pensioners and office workers to parents on the school run and working class blokes. From what I can gather lots of Spaniards seem to leave home without a decent breakfast. I get the idea that most shower the night before so they're ready to go in the morning. It seems to be up and out rather than dawdling over toast and cereals. But regular food stops, and a real interest in food, are very Spanish traits. Anytime between nine and eleven in the morning overall wearing blokes down tools and open up their lunch-boxes. In a similar time slot bars the length and breadth of Spain fill up with people getting something to eat as a sort of more s...

Back in 1993, in a football game between La Coruña and Sevilla, there was an incident between Diego Maradona and Alberto Albístegui. The physiotherapist for Sevilla went out to help Maradona but by the time he got there Maradona was back on his feet and no worse for wear. The La Coruña player, Albístegui, was bleeding though, so the Seville physio gave him a hand. Back on the touchline the Sevilla coach, Carlos Salvador Bilardo, was incensed by the behaviour of his medic. He was shouting the equivalent of "For God sake Domingo (name of the physio), who gives a toss about the other side!, the ones in the coloured shirts are ours, Pisalo, pisalo!" Now pisalo means something like stamp on him, stamp on him. It was one of those football stories that became legend. As a result, during the nineties, it was not unusual to hear chants from the Spanish terraces of “Pisalo, pisalo!” when the fans thought a certain type of play was called for. 1994/95 season Cup-winners Cup. Chels...