Life in Culebrón

Do you know what a calco is? In Spanish, it means a carbon copy or a direct translation. It’s what happens when you take a phrase in English and translate it word for word into Spanish. Sometimes that works perfectly well, but more often it ends up sounding slightly odd to a Spanish ear—just as it does when the same thing happens the other way round. One I always forget is when, in a shop, someone asks if I need help and I reply with the direct translation of “I’m fine, thanks”. Perfectly acceptable in English, but slightly puzzling for the salesperson in El Corte Inglés, who may wonder why I’ve suddenly decided to comment on my state of health. Another common example is saying “I can’t swim”, at which point the Spaniard you’re with might start wondering why they’d never noticed your prosthetic leg or the tiny breathing apparatus you’ve been discreetly carrying around. If, instead, you said you didn’t know how to swim, it would make perfect sense. And one I hear all the time is “Is it ...

On the after lunch news Rajoy was chatting to Theresa May. I don't think our President speaks English and I'm pretty sure that May doesn't speak Spanish. Just behind them was a chap with grey curly hair and one of those "access all area" passes. I presume he was their interpreter. On the Wordreference.com forum pages I sometimes have a go at helping people to translate things. I tend to go the Spanish English way rather than write in Spanish as I am very aware of the manifold slips that I make when writing in Spanish. Wordreference is a wonderful dictionary cum language resource if you don't know it. For quite a while now I've listened to the Spanish podcasts by Alex occasionally assisted by Vanesa on the cunningly named Spanishpodcast.net . A while ago they started to push their YouTube channel as well but it took me a while to getting around to having a look. On the videos Alex didn't look at all like I expected from having heard his voice ...

I don't have any work between the end of June and the beginning of September. No pay either so it's not quite as good as it sounds. And with Maggie working mornings our options about getting out and about have been a little more restricted too. This is one of the reasons that I've got through quite a lot of books over the summer. That and because I prefer short books. Reading ten books with 200 pages is only like reading a couple of big thick books. Anyway I get bored with one style, one set of vocabulary and the same basic theme. Generally I've read books in Spanish - partly to try and improve my language but also so that  I have a bit more local culture under my belt. After all you don't need to have read every Kate Atkinson or Stieg Larsson to be able to have a conversation about their style. Talking about what you have read is a common enough conversation so the more points of reference I have the greater the possibility of maintaining that dialogue. The onl...