LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

   Many websites offer language help under the heading “Word of the Day.” They mean well, but they peddle arcane vocabulary that has little to do with our contemporary needs. I say this despite being a pedant and a lover of precise words. Years ago, in college, I bought a little booklet entitled Ten Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary , which was filled with obscure, archaic terms nobody would ever understand in daily discourse. I see that this practice continues, to my regret, because I endorse building vocabulary in context, not in lists. I always try to expand my vocabulary when reading, especially literature produced by good writers.      Expand your vocabulary by reading and looking up words you encounter, and not by relying on lists like this: Fortuitous Vilipend Nefarious Rancor Mellifluous Verdigris Slopulation                   

It has been raining in Spain for over a month. Entire villages have been evacuated, roads and bridges have collapsed, and dams are overflowing. The idiom "llover sobre mojado" has returned to its original meaning of raining upon rain. The soil cannot absorb any more water, and it is spitting it back up. A disaster. "Llover sobre mojado has been translated as "when it rains, it pours." This is a partially acceptable translation when it means that it rains pitchforks, cats, and dogs, and even buckets, but it does not explain the figurative meaning of one unpleasant event happening again and again, over and over. "Lo que ocurre es que llueve sobre mojado: es la enésima vez que Laborda tiene que soportar que..." (La Razón, 02/09/2002). Laborda has had to put up with... whatever, again and again, and thus "llueve sobre mojado". This idiomatic expression is on everybody's lips these days in Iberia, to prove that "the rain in Spain falls m...

  My Random House Webster's Dictionary defined simile as "a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, as in she is like a rose.” I remember (those were the days!) reading in 2003, the Bonita Daily News , Florida, on July 11, this comparison or simile with ugly: “That new pharmacy is an assault to my eyes; it is everything the LPA is supposed to stop! It is a big box, ugly as sin itself, a monstrosity.” This led me to delve deeply and find more "ugly" possibilities in current English:  Ugly as sin (a toad,  butt ugly, fuck, the devil, shit, death, a face that would stop a clock, as cat shit, piss-ugly, pug ugly, hell, as it gets, as can be ).       I did not stop here, remember this is a bilingual Blog. How does "feo" fare in Spanish? And I found the following:  Más feo que un pecado (Picio, Carracuca, un dolor, el hambre, el bu, Quasimodo,  que pegarle a un padre [con un calcetín sudado], feo del culo, feo con...

  I have just discovered I suffer from Bag Lady Syndrome , and—upon reflection—that I have been suffering from it since childhood. It is a deep-seated anxiety, not a clinical diagnosis but a recognized psychological fear of running out of money. I am not an impulse buyer; on the contrary, I feel guilty after every purchase, including the necessary ones. I have never actually been short of money, yet I have spent a lifetime bracing myself for the possibility of becoming down-and-out—or worse, a penniless derelict, a panhandler with excellent grammar. I am not a miser. I simply suffer. And so I think a great deal about money. Unsurprisingly, I also collect the words for it. In Spanish, my collection so far includes: ahorrillos, alpiste, astillar, en B, banca, billetaje, billete, blanquear, blanqueo, caja B, candongas, cartón, pasar el cazo, céntimo, chavo, clavo, de clavo, colorado, crudo, cuartos, dineral, dinero extra, dinero negro, dos duros, extra, fajo, gañota, gastar un c...

  Word repetition for emphasis is found in English, but in Spanish it is common and natural, used in daily conversation at all levels. “Esta sopa está buena, buena” emphasizes that it is not just good but really delicious. If we say that Mary “es guapa, guapa” , the listener will understand that Mary is a real beauty. A woman may be guapa , but guapa, guapa is the epitome of prettiness. Karlos Arguiñano, the famous Spanish chef, puts it this way: “Es éste un plato sencillo de Andújar, sencillo y rico, rico” in his book 1069 recetas (1996). La explicación ha quedado clara, clara. ¿Verdad?

¿Por qué ese afán de justificarse, de dar explicaciones, de rendir cuentas a los demás por cada acción emprendida? ¿Se trata de un complejo de inferioridad, de inseguridad, de una falta de personalidad? Vaya usted a saber. He entresacado dos citas de Un antro de perdidos (1990), novela escrita por mi padre, Delfín Carbonell Marshall (1912-2002), que resultan especialmente sugerentes a propósito de este tema. La obra recoge, en clave narrativa, sus experiencias como profesor. “… el hombre es el animal que se justifica, que pretende razonar sus acciones para presentarlas como buenas, aunque no lo sean.”             “… si esta justificación no ha justificado nada, ha cumplido con el fin de todas las                     justificaciones.” Y yo estaba tentado de justificar esta entrada del Blog, pero he decidido no hacer.