LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

Below, please find what I wrote a year ago as New Year's resolutions and what I accomplished: I   have been scoffing at New Year's resolutions for years, but I have returned to the fold in 2025. I want to try old systems anew to see if there are any results. Little to lose trying to improve ourselves and become more efficient, right? So, I have prepared a few resolutions that, if implemented, will gratify my day-to-day living. Here they are, for you to see and me to perform: 1. Finish compiling  A Phraseological Dictionary, English-Spanish . I have been working on it for 4 years, and 2025 should put an end to it. Actively seek a publisher. ( I worked on this dictionary for several hours every single day, but did not finish it. As of today, the manuscript has 920,000 words and no publisher in sight. ) 2. Write  Literatura en Lengua Inglesa, II and III . ( Wrote Literatura inglesa II and was published in November. ) 3. Improve my phonetic abilities by reading aloud in En...

 Being old is not a curse but a natural development of the human body. Language, per usual, reflects our attitudes and even exaggerations about age, in comparisons, like David is as old as the hills (Adam, Methuselah, dirt, the earth, mountains, or the Pyramids, time.  The Spanish language is not to be left behind, and it comes up with expressions like:  Más viejo que Matusalén, que andar a pie, la tos, andar a gatas, Carracuca, Altamira, la sarna, el anuncio de la Casera, del año de la nana (de la polca, de Mariacastaña). The mysteries and hyperbole of language are to be taken with a grain of salt.

Sometimes language gives the lie to long-standing misconceptions about people. English-speaking cultures have often stereotyped Hispanics as lazy, indolent, or slothful, while tending to see themselves as hardworking and grit-driven—people who make the effort, go the extra mile, and endure pain and hardship to attain a goal. No pain, no gain has long functioned as a kind of Anglo-Saxon battle cry. And yet, upon closer examination of language, a rather different picture emerges. Spanish possesses a richer store of expressions and idiomatic phrases conveying the ideas of perseverance, resilience, and the overcoming of obstacles through sustained effort and grit. In this respect, linguistic evidence quietly undermines cultural cliché. See for yourselves:  medicina que pica, cura (sana)  el que algo quiere, algo le cuesta  no hay atajo sin trabajo  no hay miel sin hiel el que quiere celeste que le cueste  no hay barranco sin atranco no hay vida sin fatiga el que n...

Don Rafael Narvona me ha bloqueado de su cuenta en X. Cierto que le he dirigido un par de puntualizaciones, pero siempre correctamente, no como él, que insulta a troche y moche. ¡Qué cosas! A mí no me agrada que me llamen la atención o me apunten errores, pero creo que tengo que estar a las duras y a las maduras. El que la hace, la paga, y si yo la hago, yo la pago, me guste o no. Pero bueno, nada pierdo, y el Sr. Narvona se deshace de un corrector-editor gratuito, que además tiene un ojo de lince para las faltas de los demás, si  no de las suyas propias. 

  At the end of the calendar year, I tend to look back and review the previous twelve months, weighing their positive or negative impact on my life. This year, I have resolved to adopt a realistically positive outlook on events, and, to bolster that resolve, I have turned to proverbs and refranes . I found one that suits my purpose perfectly: When one door closes, another opens . I document it with a citation from New Zealand: “He’ll be sadly missed if it is the end, no doubt about that, but as one door shuts another opens, so we’ll press on” ( Harnesslink , 4 Feb 2004). To paraphrase Hermann Hesse , we must take the time and trouble to strengthen ourselves against fear, to combat the dread of the unknown and of the future, and to sustain a belief in tomorrow. Si una puerta se cierra, ciento se abren (or otra se abre ), and experience has taught me that many doors will close in 2026; yet I firmly believe that many others will open. Hope and cheerfulness are well captured by Fernan...

Just noticed that in my Bilingual Phraseological Dictionary , I only have one entry for CHRIST, but many for CRISTO. The parallel English idiomatic expressions do not mention Christ, and some are even irreverent. Take a look and see for yourselves: Armar un Cristo (lio, escándalo) Kick up a fuss, raise hell, raise cain Tu padre va a armar un Cristo, ya verás Your father is going to kick up a fuss, you’ll see — “… muy capaz de armar un escándalo en público.” José Donoso, Donde van a morir los elefantes , 1995. Chile. Cristo bendito Goodness gracious Cristo bendito, ¿qué te ha pasado? Goodness gracious, what’s happened to you? — “Cristo bendito, dijo.” Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La reina del sur , 2002. Esp. Donde Cristo dio las tres voces (perdio el gorro) Out in the sticks, in the back of beyond, in the middle of nowhere David ahora vive lejos, donde Cristo dio las tres voces David now lives far away, out in the sticks — “Un día fue conducido a picar unas rocas, aborrecidas, cerca de la...

    In a previous post, I chose corrupción as the word of the year in Peninsular Spanish. As I anticipated, FUNDEU RAE (Fundación del Español Urgente, Real Academia Española) has opted instead for arancel , apparently on the grounds of frequency, in keeping with a posture of political neutrality that has little to do with the study of language as social practice or lived experience.   I have conducted a modest, admittedly unscientific poll among acquaintances, students, friends, and family. All of them know perfectly well what corrupción means, whereas several hesitated or faltered when asked about arancel . I am well aware that anecdotal evidence does not compete methodologically with corpus data, and I stand ready to be corrected on scientific grounds; still, I stick to my guns and proclaim corrupción the word of the year for 2025. One can only hope that it will lose currency in 2026—and perhaps even disappear from our vocabulary altogether.

Hearing world leaders speak English on television, I often find myself recalling Donald Trump’s blunt remark: “I don’t understand a word they are saying!” Crude and impolite—true to character—but refreshingly unvarnished. He said aloud what others merely think. Few ever question the actual intelligibility of a president’s or prime minister’s speech delivered in English. Politeness, protocol, and the illusion of mutual understanding conspire to silence doubt. And when two dignitaries meet behind closed doors, both are often equally ill at ease in English, making a true marriage of minds , as Shakespeare would have had it, effectively impossible. Most world leaders feel uncomfortable in English, which only reinforces my long-held belief: people do not want to learn languages—even when circumstances force them to. Competence may be achieved; ease rarely is. A satirical scene circulating on Instagram captures this perfectly. An Asian dignitary addresses President Trump in his own language...

  This being the Season to be Jolly, Christmas, in celebration of the nativity of Jesus Christ, let me jot down some phraseology in Spanish with the name  Cristo : Armar un Cristo (lio, escándalo) Kick up a fuss, raise hell, raise cain Tu padre va a armar un Cristo, ya verás Your father is going to kick up a fuss, you’ll see — “… muy capaz de armar un escándalo en público.” José Donoso, Donde van a morir los elefantes , 1995. Chile. Cristo bendito Goodness gracious Cristo bendito, ¿qué te ha pasado? Goodness gracious, what’s happened to you? — “Cristo bendito, dijo.” Arturo Pérez-Reverte, La reina del sur , 2002. Esp. Donde Cristo dio las tres voces (perdio el gorro) Out in the sticks, in the back of beyond, in the middle of nowhere David ahora vive lejos, donde Cristo dio las tres voces David now lives far away, out in the sticks — “Un día fue conducido a picar unas rocas, aborrecidas, cerca de la raya de Francia: no sólo estaban donde Cristo dio las tres voces, sino que....

Unfortunately, I am not a religious believer. I wish I were. But I was not touched with the blessing—or the blindness—of belief. And yet I proclaim myself a cultural Christian, a cultural Catholic, someone who belongs to and feels at home in the Western Christian tradition and civilization. I respect, and even admire, those who believe in the beyond, in miracles, in saints and resurrection. I simply cannot—and I will never question it or argue about it. Belief is not something one chooses or debates into existence. I repeat: I am part of the Christian tradition. I feel comfortable in it. I enjoy Christmas carols and villancicos , Nativity scenes, belenes ,  and Christmas trees, the merriment of lights and singing, the exchanging of gifts, the Magi— los Reyes Magos —and that much-invoked peace and fraternity of the season. And that is why I am writing this: to wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS - FELICES PASCUAS DE NAVIDAD - 2025

SPANISH WORD OF THE YEAR: MY PERSONAL CHOICE As 2025 comes to an end, there is a word in Spain that seems to be on everybody’s lips. It has dominated the news—morning, afternoon, and night—throughout the year. The Real Academia Española will no doubt make its own selection, but my choice, as an eyewitness to daily usage, is CORRUPCIÓN . Corrupción —corruption, the state of being corrupt, marked by dishonest practices such as bribery, lack of integrity, and crookedness—has become part of Spain’s everyday political vocabulary. Corruption appears to be perceived as widespread within the Spanish government and, more specifically, within the governing Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). The words CORRUPCIÓN and CORRUPTO are now common currency on radio and television, in cafés, and at tertulias , both private and public. My Random House Dictionary does not mince words: “ CORRUPT applies to one, especially in public office, who acts on mercenary motives, without regard to honor, ri...

I thought of Nellie Bly (1864–1922) after reading an article on the benefits of listening to music in The Huffington Post (December 14, 2025). Having read Oliver Sacks ’s Musicophilia , Lindsay Holmes has little new to add in “7 Undeniable Benefits of Listening to Music.” What struck me instead was a now-widespread mode of reporting, far removed from the methods of Bly, one of the first investigative journalists of modern times. Holmes supports her claims with formulas such as “science shows…,” “research suggests…,” “a 2014 study found…,” and “according to experts…” "experts believe that..." Lacking confirmed sources or verifiable citations, the argument—benign though it may be—floats free of accountability. Holmes herself is hardly to blame. Her schooling shares the responsibility, as does The Huffington Post, for allowing such loose, quasi-scientific prose to pass as journalism. Nellie Bly, I suspect, would not have approved.

  I am not much given to using four-letter words or gross insults, but I am clearly in the minority. This is neither the place nor the time to explore why insults and put-downs are so prevalent in language. Today, I simply want to introduce a set of Spanish phraseological expressions that insult by invoking either one’s father or mother, alongside their English counterparts.   Hijo de la Gran Bretaña Son of a gun (of a biscuit) Es usted un hijo de la Gran Bretaña You are a son of a gun — “… me entró la furia de la desesperación y le empecé a gritar ya cosas, como  hijo de la gran bretaña..” Rafael Sánchez Mazas, La vida nueva de Pedrito de Andía , 1956. Esp. Hijo de pu Son of a gun, son of a bee, SOB Mi hefe es un hijo de pu My boss is a son of a gun — “¡Señor juez! Usted es un hijo de pu…” Víctor Cáceres, Humus , 1952. Hond. Hijo de (la gran, grandísima) puta (perra, Satanás, de mala madre, de la chingada) Son of a bitch, motherfucker, SOB Usted es ...

  CONVENTIONAL EDUCATION IS OBSOLETE        Has the internet truly changed traditional classroom education? Are students learning more and better with the recent technologies?        In 2002, I was reviewing material for the fourth volume of my English in Action , an English grammar for speakers of Spanish   (hispanohablantes) , which I wanted to be a chrestomathy of educated English. A chrestomathy is a “selection of passages used to help learn a language.”  I chose bits of poetry, short stories, newspaper articles, and relevant literary essays. In my quest, I came across an article in the Financial Times that I found of interest. It was a review, titled “Is education outdated,” of a book by a certain Lewis Perelman : School is Out: Hyperlearning, The New Technology, and the End of Education , published that year, 2002, by William Morrow and Co. I secured permission to reprint the article because I found it interesting and believe...

Does Spanish Have a Future in the United States? Spanish intellectuals often congratulate one another on the supposedly bright future of Spanish in the United States: forty-five million Latinos, no less, and even an Academy of the Spanish Language to seal the deal. In cities like New York, they say, English is no longer indispensable. Fancy that. I keep mum. Experience has taught me that there is no disputing about language, just as there is no disputing about taste. Pirandello said it best in Così è (se vi pare!) : everyone is right. And yet one cannot help asking: whatever happened to Italian in the United States? Once the second most widely spoken language, it survived for barely a generation. The same fate befell Yiddish and German. The pattern is familiar: immigrant languages may flourish briefly, but without sustained transmission, they gradually yield to English. Spanish will be no exception. It will remain visible, useful, even influential in certain contexts, but not as a comp...

  The expression tener ideas de bombero is defined in Seco’s dictionary, under bombero , as ideas “propias de persona torpe y sin ingenio.” María Moliner, under idea , gives “idea descabellada.” The DRAE likewise explains the idiom as “descabellado o absurdo.” Writers have used the phrase with this same sense. Eduardo Mendoza includes it in La verdad del caso Savolta (1973): “Nicolás tiene ideas de bombero.” Torcuato Luca de Tena writes “Tienes ideas de bombero” in Los renglones torcidos de Dios (1979). The meaning is reasonably clear on its own; it sharpens even further when we look for an idiomatic English equivalent. Options include harebrained , half-baked , madcap , screwball , or crackpot idea or opinion. One might also choose horseback idea/opinion , which Paul Green et al. define in Paul Green’s Wordbook (1998, US) as “a hurried judgement or opinion, guesswork.” Those of us who work between two languages can often refine translations or equivalents by searching ...

  Desde siempre he sabido del escritor Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), premio Nobel de Literatura, y he leído sus novelas Arrowsmith , Main Street y Babbitt . Pero estos días, buceando en su obra para la tercera parte de mi Literatura en lengua inglesa (Editatum), he descubierto su novela distópica de 1935 It Can't Happen Here . Visto lo visto en los recientes acontecimientos políticos en los Estados Unidos, quizá haya que replantearse aquello de que “eso no puede pasar aquí”. La novela trata de un demagogo y populista norteamericano que, elegido presidente, promete una vuelta a valores tradicionales, reformas económicas drásticas y un clima de miedo. Una vez en el poder, se convierte en dictador… y no cuento más. It Can't Happen Here , ficción al fin y al cabo, da que pensar —especialmente por su título— y nos lleva a preguntarnos si esa afirmación, tan confiada, podría cobrar sentido en otros países, como España. Voy a leer la novela.

Why are so many educators today averse to memorization? When did committing facts, lines of poetry, or elegant ideas to memory become unfashionable? I come from a generation that learned verses, literary passages, equations, historical dates, and geography by heart —and here I stand, none the worse for wear. In fact, I maintain that we are our memory; we are what we carry in the mind. It is no accident that Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, was mother to the nine Muses. I still honor her by memorizing as much as I can, even at my age. I explore these thoughts further in my article for VivaFifty :   https://www.vivafifty.com/aprende-memoria-mente-7450/  

  Do we think with language—or with concepts? When I was a teenager in the States, people often asked me what language I used when thinking alone. At the time, I took it for granted that thinking meant an inner verbal dialogue—English or Spanish, depending on the day. Only later did I realize the question itself was flawed. Curious, I recently looked online and found the usual well-meaning but muddled explanations—proof of how easily people confuse thinking with the words we use to describe it. In Spain, interestingly, no one has ever asked me this. Instead, I have asked others: “When you think, Mr. García López, do you use words or concepts?” Most cannot answer. And that is revealing. Consider two simple examples. Driving down the road: A ball rolls out. Linguistic thinking: “A ball. A child must be nearby… I should brake carefully because of the tailgater behind me.” Half a minute. Conceptual thinking: you see the ball, picture the child, sense the tailgater, and brak...

I have said this before, but it bears repeating: you would not believe how many speakers of both English and Spanish flatly deny, to my face, that an expression or idiom I have used even exists. At such moments, I paraphrase Ortega y Gasset: the horizon of our language is not the horizon of language. Native speakers invariably assume that if an expression is unfamiliar to them, then it cannot possibly belong to the language. Full stop. This is precisely why I insist on citations—real citations, in print—that demonstrate an idiom’s validated existence. A good example is the vintage Spanish saying “no es nada lo del ojo, y lo llevaba en la mano.” It means Nothing to worry about; it’s small potatoes, no big deal. Amando de Miguel recounts its origin: “El toro se llamaba, premonitoriamente, Barrabás, el cual espetó una cornada en el ojo del pobre matador. Acudieron los peones al quite y el maestro, para darles ánimos, les decía: No es nada, no es nada lo del ojo. Para demostrarlo, recog...

  General Douglas MacArthur said in his farewell address in 1951 that old soldiers never die; they just fade away . Writers and artists, however, neither die nor fade. They remain with us, leaving the legacy of their thoughts on the printed page. We can summon their prose—its cadence, its style, its ideas—whenever we choose, and in doing so, we carry their voices forward to newer and younger generations. These voices become what we call classics . And all of us who come after inherit their work. Each time we open a book by Carlos Fuentes, we re-create his ideas and commune with a writer no longer alive in the flesh, yet whose thought will endure as long as humanity endures. Carlos Fuentes Macías (Panamá City, 11 November 1928 – Mexico City, 15 May 2012) was a Mexican hombre del mundo . Son of a diplomat, he spent his childhood in Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Washington, Quito, and other world capitals. He later entered the diplomatic service himself, serving as ambass...

  El refranero español es rico en imágenes rurales, muchas de las cuales nacieron del trabajo en el campo.  Una de las más expresivas es:  «El que no quiera polvo, que no vaya a la era» , equivalente a la inglesa:  “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen».”  Ambas comparten la misma advertencia: si no estás dispuesto a afrontar las dificultades propias de una tarea, mejor no te metas en ella. Podemos aplicarlo a infinidad de situaciones contemporáneas. «Vamos a tener muchos problemas, así que el que no quiera polvo, que no vaya a la era» —o, en su eco inglés: “We are going to have plenty of problems, so if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” El refrán no es nuevo, ni mucho menos. Ya en 1786 lo encontramos en la obra Eusebio de Pedro Montengón, donde exclama: «¡Quien no quiera polvo que no vaya a la era, señor mío!» Una prueba más de cómo ciertas verdades populares perduran siglos sin perder su fuerza expresiva.