¿"A" o "An"?

El uso de "a" o "an" lo decide el sonido, la fonética, no las reglas.

A man, a horse, a lady, a city. // An old man, an evening, an impossibility. Eso ya lo sabemos, 

Pero: Como los sonidos rigen el uso de este artículo, emplearemos "a" delante de "a European",  "a union", "a usual problem", "a u", "a one", "a once rich man", por culpa del sonido de consonante que tienen estas vocales. 

Y como las letras f, h, l, m, n, r, s, x, tienen un sonido vocálico, escribiremos "an l", "an f", "en m"... pero "a p", "a b". 

Por el mismo motivo si la "h" se pronuncia, escribiremos "a hot day", "a hero·", "a history of Spain"... y si no, emplearemos "an": "an heiress", "an honest man".

"An history of England" huele ya a rancio, pero se oye y se ve. 

The bane of language

 Idiomatic expressions, idioms, are the bane of learners and translators, even the bane of Google Translate "lexicographers," and "goofies" behind DeepL. 

-- "Usted es muy dueño de hacer lo que quiera" is rendered by DeepL as "you are very much in charge of doing what you want" instead of "you are very much at liberty to do what you want."

-- "El jefe nos tiene a todos en un puño" appears as "the boss has all in a fist" rather than "under his thumb."

-- "Coger el rábano por las hojas" is given as "pick up the radish by the leaves" and skirts the "to put the cart before the horse."

-- "Una merienda de negros" turns out as "black market snack" when "a Chinese fire drill" would be a better equivalent. No offense meant, either way.

-- "Bebo una cerveza de Pascuas a Ramos" is jokingly rendered as "I drink an Easter beer to bouquets." 

Still, I take my hat off to them because they have improved very much... but not enought. 

Preparación, Titulación y Profesión

"Me llamo Miguel y soy Licenciado en Medicina. Oftalmólogo. He trabajado en arquitectura durante los últimos 14 años y hago proyectos arquitectónicos y urbanísticos. Si quieres que te diseñe tu casa de ensueño, llámame. Precios asequibles."

"El Chungo, cantaor de flamenco nativo con mucha labia, ha abierto bufete de abogados. Especialista en divorcios, maltrato, separaciones, herencias. 12 euros la hora."

"Corredor de fondo que ha ganado varios maratones durante los últimos 10 años y tiene experiencia como masajista, pasa consulta de oftalmología rápida. Te curará los ojos en un mes o menos por módica cantidad."

"Miguel, fontanero con mucha experiencia, da clases de apoyo a niños. Todas las asignaturas. También inglés."

"Profesor de yoga nativo con mucha experiencia. Soy bilingüe. Opero de cataratas en mi clínica privada. Precios asequibles. Primera consulta gratis."

Esos anuncios parecen, y lo son, una broma. Una broma , de mal gusto. Y sin embargo veo en un Blog para aprender inglés exactamente lo de arriba. "Profesores" sin titulación académica imparten la lengua inglesa con los "avales" de ser "nativo", "tener 10 años de experiencia", o ser "licenciados en derecho".  No hace falta más. Una licenciatura en filología inglesa, un máster de Harvard en pedagogía, unas publicaciones en inglés y castellano... no hacen falta. Se proclaman "profesores" porque sí, porque son nativos (dicen) y ya está... cualquiera puede ser profesor. Y a los alumnos les parece bien esta falta de rigor académico.

Spare me the drama, please

 

This is for those who whine, grumble, moan, carp, complain and protest too much, like Ophelia. Excuses, excuses, set forth by all those slackers who pull their hair out exclaiming that languages are just impossible to learn. They will not accept responsibility for their laziness and lack of drive. "I have no time," "I am too old," "I can´t find a good teacher," "this method is not for me," "I can´t travel to New Zealand to practice," "my children get in my hair all the time"... you name it! At this stage, I have heard just about everything. Spare me the drama, I say! Keep you language drama to yourselves, and carry on with your drab, little life.

Tourism in Spain, the Pandemic and the English language

 I have finally decided to take a few days´vacation on the beach, near Valencia, in Mare Nostrum, with its warm waters. We have rented an AirB&B house. First thing I noticed, everything (warnings, directions, etc.) were written in English. No Spanish, which is fine with me. Next day I noticed that all houses in this old part of the village were B&B... I mean all. And probably the customers came from the UK. But the Brits are not here, the streets are empty, and restaurants and bars, deserted. The result of the Covid pandemic. 

Driving back from supper, all villages appeared as ghost towns. An eerie feeling overtook me. 

This new way of life, of living, will also affect the English language in Spain. Why try and learn a language nobody speaks? Language schools and English-language teachers will have to figure out what to do. 

Mare Nostrum will be the winner. It will recuperate a bit from years of maltreatment by tourists and locals. Every cloud has a silver lining. 

QWERTY

 How lucky we are, users of Spanish and English. We share the same keyboard layout, QWERTY. The Germans arrange the letters differently and call their system QWRTZ, commonly used in Germany and Austria. And the French have their own AZERTY, although French-speaking Canadians have a similar layout as QWERTY, different from AZERTY. 

I urge my younger students to master touch typing (método ciego). Typewriters are no longer with us (may they rest in peace), but the keyboard is still here, so far, and the only way to communicate with a computer. You will never achieve any speed typing with two fingers. Trust me: hunt and peck slows you down.

May I venture to suggest you choose a Spanish QWERTY keyboard when purchasing a computer? The English-language keyboard does not have ¿, ¡, ñ, Ñ, ´, and it is necessary to learn how to type those when using Spanish. Not always easy, although possible. But if you have a Spanish QWERTY you can type in English without problems. You kill two birds with one stone and simplify your intellectual life at the same time.  

Oh, yes, there are other systems probably better than QWERTY, like DVORAK. 

¿Qué sacamos de wine, weird, kid, sick, en inglés?

 El oftalmólogo Dr. Zamenhof (1859-1917) inventó el idioma Esperanto, con una gramática simple que se puede dominar en 5 horas. Todos los sustantivos acaban en "o": Tago, día. Birdo, pájaro. Leono, león. No hay excepciones. 

En inglés tenemos una terminación en "o" que me trae de cabeza. "Wacky" es "chalado, loco", y tiene un sustantivo, en slang, "wacko." Y decimos "President Trump is a wacko". 

"Kid" es un chico, un chaval, un muchacho y tenemos "kiddo" como otra forma más. 

"Weird" es extraño, raro... y a un tipo excéntrico le llamamos "weirdo". Y decimos: "President Trump is a weirdo."

"Wine" es vino, y a un borrachín, de los de nariz colorada y pantalones medio caídos, le decimos "wino". 

Todos sabemos que abundan los "psychopaths" pero un "psycho" suena peor, como elemento perturbador, como en "President Trump is a psycho."

Tenemos también "sicko", "creepo", "bucko", que dejo para otra ocasión. Por cierto, las malas lenguas dicen que "Esperanto is an international language nobody speaks."

Spanish oddities

 

Of course, written letters are always silent until we speak them, but as Spanish is "easy" to pronounce (so people think, search me why!) it is believed that there are no "catches" to the sounds of Castilian.

Did you know that in Madrid, Madrid is pronounced "Madrí" with no "d" sound? And worse still, many madrileños will say "Madriz", with the Peninsular "z", like "think." Listen to any version of the Mexican Agustin Lara´s  musical composition "Madrid," a chotis. 

Did you know that many people forget the sound of "j" in reloj (reló)? And yet they will pronounce it in the plural, "relojes." 

Did you know that the sound of pleasure, measure, treasure exists in Argentinian Spanish: Yo, pollo, whereas in other localities is is a plain sound like "io, poio"?

Did you know that Spanish does not have a "v" sound as in vase, vet, and that "baca" and "vaca" sound exactly the same? 

Did you know that Spanish-speaking people refer to their language in two different ways:  as "español" or "castellano"? 

Did you know that the Mexican Agustín Lara wrote three famous songs to Spain: Madrid, Valencia and Granada. 

Used to y Usually

 

I have discovered the life and work of Dr. Irvin D. Yalom, eminent M.D. and fascinating writer. Currently I am reading his The Schopenhauer Cure  and  When Nietzsche Wept, which I am enjoying, and which I venture to recommend.

Dr. Yalom is a bit pedantic, which I love, of course (welcome to the club!), and I suspect he dips into all kinds of dictionaries (as we all should) in order to pick the right word to discribe his thinking and his chracters' ideas.
But... I stumbled into this sentence: "How did she used to do it?" which made me prick up my ears.
To use is a regular verb: I use a knife to cut bread with. People used stones but now they use toilet paper. This is fine.
Used to, however, means an action repeated in the past, habitual at a given time: I used to to walk but now I don´t.
Usually = suelo: Suelo ir al cine, I usually go to the movies.
Used to = solía: Solía ir al cine, I used to go to the movies.
However the verb is still "to use" and Dr. Yalom should have written: "How did she use to do it?"
Why did the good Dr. make this clumsy mistake? This is a challenge for you.
Do you know the answer? 

Please remember that with all the tools on Internet, clumsy writing has no excuse, in either English or Spanish. 

Marilyn Yalom, Feminism and Language

 

Dr. Marilyn Yalom (1932-2019), feminist and historian, and life-long companion to Dr. Irvin Yalom (When Nietzsche Wept), wrote A history of the Breast, A History of the Wife, The Social Sex. A History of Female Friendship, How the French Invented Love... and many others. She was a true-blue femnist of the intelligent, scholarly and educated kind.  I stand to be corrected, but none of her books on women deal with language.

I am a feminist because I believe in justice, equality, and have three daughters and three granddaughters. And I believe in change, in dislocating the status quo, in kicking ass, but seriously, not half-hartedly. And I believe that trying to change language artificially is not going to change society. George Orwell and his newspeak taugut us that. To change a language artificially changes nothing. "Socios y socias, niños y niñas, unidos y unidas" is a travesty of equality. "If a lawyer wants to win a case, he/she must..." is a mockery. 

I urge those ineterested in feminism to read Dr. Marilyn Yalom. 

¿Cómo se dice en inglés una tostada, un consejo, un mueble?

 En lengua castellana hablamos de un mueble, un consejo, un trabajo, una noticia, una madera, un papel, una tontería... cuando en inglés no debemos decir a furniture, ni an advice... y recurriremos a decir a piece of. Por ejemplo:

Furniture es muebles o mobiliario. Un mueble, a piece of furniture.
Advice es consejos, pero a piece of advice es un consejo.
News es noticias pero a piece of news es una noticia.
Wood es madera, pero si queremos una madera diremos a piece of wood. Necesito una madera para arreglar esto, I need a piece of wood to fix this.
Toast es tostadas y a piece of toast es una tostada. In the morning I have two pieces of toast, por la mañana tomo dos tostadas. In the morning I eat toast for breakfast, por la mañana tomo tostadas en el desayuno. 
Shit es toda la mierda posible, pero una mierda -un poquito del total posible- será a piece of shit. That is not a work of art, it is a piece of shit. Eso no es una obra de arte, es una mierda.

A piece también se refiere al coito (sexual): Mary is a good piece. Y eso lo podemos traducir al castellano como nos plazca, dependiendo del país hispano de origen.

The heart in Language

 

In 2018 Marilyn Yalom published "An Unconventional History of Love," and later gave a TED talk entitled "How the Image of the Heart Became the Symbol of Love." I recommend both. 

The heart has entered the English language through many expressions of daily use, dealing not only with love:

1) He is a man after my own heart: He has the same tastes and views as me. 

2) I am still eating my heart out because she left me: I am still sad, longing for and missing her.

3) She broke the engagement because she had a change of heart: She changed her opinion, her mind.

4) The troops lost heart and ran away: The troops became discouraged and afraid.

5) I am telling you this from the bottom of my heart: I am telling you sincerely, in all truth.

6) Please, have a heart and help me: Be compasionate, good to me, and help me.

Eat to one´s heart content. Wear one´s heart in one´s sleeve. Have a heart of gold. At heart. Cross one´s heart. Take heart... and many more. 

El signo de exclamación

 El signo (!) se emplea tras una exclamación o admiración u orden directa: Watch out! Come here! Nada más. Fawler dice lo siguiente sobre el uso excesivo del signo de exclamación: "Excessive use of exclamation marks … is one of the things that betray the uneducated writer." No escribas Do it now!!!

Tres signos de exclamación no sirven para nada, y demuestran la incultura del que escribe. 

No escribas en un e-mail: "¡¡¡Hola, buenos días!!!"

The less the better, per usual.

Language and Reality

 

Randon House Dictionary defines "reality" as "The state or quality of being real", which is one of the many definitions we can read there. Instead of going to the parallel definition in Spanish, I have chosen to extract what Spanish-speaking writers have to say when using the word.

--"La realidad se compone de lo que existe y de las posibilidades que nosotros alumbremos en ella," José Antonio Marina.

--"Cada uno es protagonista de su propia realidad." José María Gironella.

--"Porque la literatura no es menos real que eso que llaman realidad." Jorge Luis Borges.

"... Borges veía la realidad como una expresión de la literatura, y ése es el mayor homenaje que se puede hacer a la literatura." Adolfo Bioy Casares.

"La soledad sí que es capaz de generar deseos que no se corresponden con el sentido común o con la realidad." Roberto Bolaño.

"Pero la realidad no puede ser mirada sino desde el punto de vista  que cada cual ocupa, fatalmente, en el universo." José Ortega y Gasset.

Teaching the Spanish articles

Chloe, my eldest granddaughter, is set on improving her Spanish and thinks I can help her. She has a genetic knack for the language and yet la mano, el pie, el dedo, la muñeca, baffle her. And rightly so! I have decided not to mention genders, masculine, femenine or neuter. And certainly I will never tell her that Spanish has "masculino, femenino, neutro, común, epiceno y ambiguo."

I have simplified this business by pointing out that certain words use "el": el alma, el casco, el hampa, and others use "la": la alberca, la desgracia, la taxista. And I add that some other words use "lo": lo bueno, lo cortés, lo rico." And that is the way the cookie crumbles, I may add. 

What we read is "el libro." What we buy with in England is "la libra."

I never explain rules or what-have you. Neither rhyme nor reason governs the idiom of a people, as Pearsall-Smith, the Quaker, put it. What I do with Chloe, at this stage, is correct her and correct her again, and again, and remind her to remember.  

Knowing her, I know that soon she will be bilingual, like many of us in the family. 

Refranes y el Butterfly Effect Theory

Por clavo se pierde una herradura - For want of a nail the shoe was lost. 

For want of a nail the shoe was lost / Por un clavo se pierde una herradura.

Pero la cosa no acaba así, porque tiene más: 

Ingles: 

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost

For want of a shoe, the horse was lost,

and for want of a horse, the man was lost. 

Castellano:

Por un clavo se pierde una herradura,

por una herradura, un caballo,

por un caballo, un caballero,

por un caballero, un campo,

por un campo, un reino

Benjamin Franklin (el del pararrayos) nos dio esta versión del refrán:

For the want of a nail the shoe was lost

For the want of a shoe the horse was lost

For the want of a horse the rider was lost

For the want of a rider the battle was lost

For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost

And all for the want of a horse-shoe nail.

¿Será este refrán el origen del famoso Butterfly Effect Theory? Yo creo que sí.

Literatura y traducción

Por ignorancia lingüística tengo que leer en traducción a Strindberg, Tolstoi, Pirandello, Sienkiewicz, Ibsen, Seifert y muchos otros grandes de la literatura universal. De los 6.500 idiomas manejo, de mala manera, tres, lo que me condena a leer traducciones. "Muerte en Venecia", 1912, de Thomas Mann, es una novelita que he leído tanto en inglés como en castellano, ya que el alemán que manejo da para poco.   

Haciendo poda en mi biblioteca, he encontrado dos versiones al castellano. Sólo transcribo un ejemplo y, esta vez, el lector sacará sus conclusiones. Ya en Venecia, Adolf von Aschenbach, instalado en el Hotel Excelsior, baja a cenar:

"Había allí un ambiente mucho más abierto y de mayor amplitud y tolerancia. En los coloquios a media voz se notaban los acentos de los grandes idiomas. El traje de etiqueta, uniforme de la cortesía, reunía en armoniosa unidad aparente todas las variedades de gentes allí congregadas. Veíanse los secos y largos semblantes de los americanos, familias rusas, señoras inglesas, niños alemanes con institutrices francesas. La raza eslava parecía dominar. Cerca de él hablaban en polaco." (Traducción de Raúl Schiaffino.)

"Ante él se desplegaron amplios horizontes que abarcaban, tolerantes, una gran diversidad. Los sonidos de los principales idiomas se confundían en un murmullo apagado. El traje de noche internacional, especie de uniforme de la decencia, sintetizaba exteriormente la heterogeneidad de lo humano en una convencional unidad. Podía verse en semblante enjuto y alargado del americano, la típica familia numerosa rusa, damas inglesas y niños alemanes con ayas francesas. El elemento eslavo parecía predominante. Muy cerca de él se oía hablar polaco." (Traducción de Juan del Solar.)

Comparando las dos traducciones, e incapaz de leer el original, transcribo una traducción al inglés:

"A wide and all-encompassing horizon opened itself out. Muffled sounds from many different languages were mixing. The omnipresent dinner jacket, the uniform of the civilized world, gatahered all facets of human variety into one orderly whole.  One saw the dry and elongated face of the American, the large Russian family, English ladies, German children with French nannies. The Slavic component appeared to predominate. Polish was spoken right next to him." (Traducción de Martin C. Doege.)

Está claro que cuando conocemos a un autor por traducciones, jamás podremos hablar ni de su estilo, ni de su elección de vocabulario, ni de su sintaxis... 

Parkinson´s Law and Language learning

Professor Parkinson wrote in 1955 that "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." We may replace "work" with "study" and get: "Study expands so as to fill the time available for its mastery." Yes, I am referring to procrastination, applied to the study of languages. And that is why setting goals, realistic goals is so crucial to acquiring a second language. Say to yourself: "By July 2021, I will have mastered Hindi well enough to read, write and hold a conversation in it." Then you set yourself, on a daily regular basis, to accomplish that promise.

"I will read Stoker´s Dracula in English by next Monday." "I will watch the series Dead to me, recommended by Lux_Lucy, before next Wednesday." "During August I will keep a diary in English." "I will learn 15 common proverbs in English and Spanish by the 21st of this month." 

We must set a time limit. This is essential, or else time will expand for ever... and ever, and Professor Parkinson´s Law will haunt us for the rest of our lives.