LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

  CONVENTIONAL EDUCATION IS OBSOLETE        Has the internet truly changed traditional classroom education?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 It was a review, titled “Is education outdated,” of a book by a certain Lewis Perelman : School is Out: Hyperlearning, The New Technology, and the End of Education , published that year, 2002, by William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.

  These days, aired and fomented by the present Socialist-Cumunist Spanish Government, the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War is all the rage. The war ended 86 years ago and left the country in shambles, with one million dead, cities destroyed, and the countryside deserted. During the post-war period, with Europe fighting the Second World War, Spain had to endure the new dictatorship of General Franco. My father, Delfín Carbonell Marshall, spent almost 2 years in a concentration camp (he wrote about it, and it can be read in Sánchez Drago's  La Retaguardia ). These days, I repeat, socialists and communists are fanning the flames again, remembering a period before they were born, but averring they were eyewitnesses to the daily atrocities of the dictatorship. I lived through that period, but I advise those interested in what daily life was like under Franco's dictatorship to read the  novels of that period, such as those of Juan Antonio de Zunzunegui  (1901-1982) . Some ...

Oigo a hispanohablantes apoyar algunos de sus argumentos citando refranes que yo jamás he oído, y a su "abuela" como fuente de su veracidad. Yo prefiero apoyarlos con citaciones fehacientes.  Eso de "esto es así porque lo digo yo" no reza conmigo. Como de muestra vale un botón, veamos un dicho y su traducción al inglés, con apoyos literarios:  La ocasión hace al ladrón.  Opportunity makes the thief. Que en latín se decía Occasio facit furem . — “Vuesa merced perdone el atrevimiento, que la ocasión hace al ladrón: hallé la puerta abierta y entréme, dándome ánimo al entrarme venir a servir a vuesa merced, y no con palabras.” Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Entremés del vizcaíno fingido , 1615 . España. || “La ocasión hace al ladrón…”  Emilia Zanders, Breve historia de la ópera , 1992 . Venezuela. || “En La ocasión hace al ladrón , Agustín Moreto Cabaña trata el parangón posible…”  Reynaldo González, El bello habano. Biografía íntima del tabaco , 1998 . Cuba....

  Not a day goes by without hearing about the nuevas tecnologías and how they are reshaping our lives. E-mail, mobile phones, laptops, tablets, instant communication, e-readers - the whole arsenal. I am grateful for them and use them constantly. From my home in Madrid, I can consult the Library of Congress catalog. I no longer need to hurry to the Biblioteca Nacional to look up an issue of El Imparcial from 1890, nor must I print a manuscript and mail it to my publisher in Barcelona. I can read a New York newspaper or listen to a Pittsburgh radio station right here in Europe. Bibliography is now literally at my fingertips. Yet I sometimes think we forget that humanity has always lived with technology. Fire, paper, the wheel, boats, writing, currency, the plow, the printing press—every age has had its innovations. The difference today is merely the speed: change now arrives overnight, not over generations. But after all the gadgets and marvels, our most powerful tool remains th...

In learning a second language, our aim should be to attain the highest possible level of proficiency. We should cultivate all five skills: speaking , listening , pronunciation , reading , and writing . Our aspirations should be limitless. Yet we often take our mother tongue for granted, assuming we command it fully when in fact we may not. At times, we even strive so earnestly to master a new language that we begin to neglect our first means of communication. True bilingualism means handling both languages at an equal level. I invite you to read my article on this subject in VivaFifty .

  BILINGUAL BICULTURAL   In the early fifties, as a young boy, I crossed the Atlantic aboard a TWA Super Constellation propeller airplane from Madrid. After many hours, we landed at Idlewild Airport in New York. A tallish, thin, blond young boy reached America and immediately felt at home. “This is home at last”, I said to myself, and thus started my love affair with this country. What was it about Idlewild, the Greyhound bus that took me to Pittsburgh, a nine-hour ride, the people around me… It was a feeling of contentedness, of a certain joy, of adventure and emotion. All seemed new, fresh, and different, so different from my adopted city of Madrid, where I have never truly felt at home to this day. I had my first Coke, my second Coke, my third Coke during that long trip through Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh, the Smokey City, as it was then called. I was better off than most because I spoke English and was able to understand and make myself understood to the astonishmen...

Don Pancracio Celdrán, defensor acérrimo del idioma Mi buen amigo Don Pancracio Celdrán (1942–2019) fue siempre un firme defensor del idioma, vehemente y directo en el ataque. En nuestras conversaciones se sulfuraba al comentar lo mal que se expresan muchos escritores de hoy. Esa misma indignación la vertía en sus escritos, que recomiendo vivamente. Durante años dirigió un consultorio lingüístico en El Semanal , donde ejerció una labor esclarecedora y combativa. Sirva como muestra esta cita suya, de una franqueza sin filtro que solo él sabía manejar: “...energúmenos de la cultura… salvajes… quienes deciden rebelarse contra las normas del idioma, la sintaxis y todo ese andamiaje de la lengua sostenido por la tradición.” —Pancracio Celdrán Gomáriz, America Reads Spanish , 20/9/2006. Un testimonio más de su pasión por la lengua y de su inquebrantable defensa de la tradición idiomática.

Viendo a los dirigentes de sindicatos españoles actuales, oyéndo las inanidades ripiosas y trasnochadas que dicen, obervando cómo visten y gesticulan y viven en el siglo XIX, me ha venido a las mientes una cita de mi amigo Fernándo Sánchez Dragó , (1936-2023) hombre valiente como pocos, sin pelos en la lengua:  “Pertenecer a un sindicato es para mí (y que se pique quien quiera), (…) síntoma casi inequívoco de que el propietario o usuario del carnet de marras carece de dignidad, desconoce el sentido del honor y no es precisamente un émulo de don Quijote.” ( Libertad, fraternidad, desigualdad , 2007). Ahí queda eso. 

Juan Antonio de Zunzunegui: un testigo imprescindible de la España franquista Sobre la novelística de Juan Antonio de Zunzunegui (1901-1982) escribí mi tesis doctoral en los años 1963-64 , bajo la dirección de Joaquín de Entrambasaguas . Obtuve la calificación de sobresaliente , pero, más allá del valor académico, aquella investigación me abrió una ventana privilegiada a la España de la posguerra y la larga dictadura, a la que Zunzunegui sobrevivió. Quien quiera entender la atmósfera social, moral y política del régimen de Franco debe leer a Zunzunegui. Sus novelas —a veces ásperas, otras llenas de ternura, siempre veraces— registran lo que la historia oficial callaba. Zunzunegui observó con precisión las miserias y grandezas de la vida cotidiana y supo dar voz a una España que sobrevivía entre las sombras. Muchos ahora hablan del franquismo sin haberlo vivido; Zunzunegui lo noveló casi como notario. Algún día escribiré aquí sobre nuestras pequeñas tertulias . De momento, recupero u...

  En todas partes cuecen habas (y en la mía a calderadas) Everywhere birds sing (flowers bloom, rivers flow, dogs bite), the same everywhere Siempre es igual porque en todas partes cuecen habas It’s always the same because everywhere dogs bite — “Pero en todas partes cuecen habas.” Javier Pérez de Silva et al. , La televisión contada con sencillez , 2002. Esp. || “Ciertamente en todas partes se cuecen habas, pero aquí el homicidio se ha desbordado hasta límites que contradicen...” Tiempo, 16/4/1994. Colom. Ser algo habas contadas A cinch, as good as done, take it or leave (lump) it Este proyecto son habas contadas This project is as good as done / Sólo tienes tres opciones. Son habas contadas You only have three options: take it or dump it — “…aunque tampoco hay muchas opciones. Son habas contadas.” La Vanguardia, 24/10/1994. Esp.

  Cuando escribas, nunca te vayas por las ramas A menos que escribas una nota familiar o una carta de amor, donde todo vale y  cuantas más palabras emplees, mejor, cíñete al tema y no te vayas por las ramas. ●  Nunca mezclaremos negocios y cuestiones personales. ●  No usaremos enfermedades como excusa por nuestro retraso en escribir.  ●  A menos que nuestro destinatario sea amigo íntimo, a nadie le interesa nuestra situación familiar o conyugal o nuestro estado de salud. ●  Todo el mundo tiene vicisitudes en la vida, no somos los únicos. No las compartas. ● Parecerá mentira, pero nuestros logros personales, y los de nuestros hijos, sólo podrán interesar a familiares y amigos, a lo mejor. A lo peor, ni siquiera. ● ¿Conoces a alguien que no esté ocupado? No excuses tus retrasos explicando que no tienes tiempo.   Escribir más de lo necesario es una falta de educación

Bilingualism offers more options. If you are bilingual in English and Spanish, you can enjoy playwrights who are virtually unknown to most English speakers. This somewhat rambling beginning is prompted by a book I had forgotten I owned, one I first read in my youth. And there it was, the line that once stirred my young mind, still underlined in red: “Yo lo que quiero es beberme hasta el último trago de mi juventud.” (“All I want is to drink my youth to the last drop.”) Did I ever heed that advice? Better not answer. Alejandro Casona (1903–1965) wrote Nuestra Natacha (1935), the source of that unforgettable sentence. It is a wonderful and highly readable play. Casona also wrote La sirena varada , Prohibido suicidarse en primavera , La dama del alba , La barca sin pescador , Los árboles mueren de pie , Siete gritos en el mar , among many others. May I suggest you look into the works of this remarkable Spanish playwright? I am sure Casona will not disappoint you.  

  All Right… y sus peligros ortográficos All right. Una expresión aparentemente sencilla, que significa bien, de acuerdo . También puede ser todo bien . Ejemplos sobran: All right, I’ll do it. Y también puede tener el matiz de ya lo creo :  He’ll come at five, all right . Hasta aquí, todo right . Pero, como siempre en inglés, lo sencillo esconde sus trampas. Muchos —cada vez más— la pronuncian como  awright .  Está muy bien que así suene en la calle, pero jamás, jamás se escribe así . Ese awright pertenece al reino de lo inconfesable. Y luego está el famoso —o infame— alright , todo juntito. Se ha ido colando en titulares, mensajes apresurados y conversaciones digitales, y hoy los diccionarios lo aceptan como variante coloquial de all right . Coloquial, sí; recomendable, no necesariamente. El gran lexicógrafo Robert Burchfield , en su The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage (Oxford, 1997), llega mucho más lejos: asegura que escribir alright en vez de all right...

Do you forget words sometimes? Do you often hesitate and falter when speaking because a word, on the tip of your tongue, escapes you? Read my article in VivaFifty: " Forgetting a Word does not Make you Senile ."   

  El esquema y el borrador: los primeros pasos del escritor. Un esquema es, en esencia, una lista de tareas para escribir . Nada misterioso; ofrece dirección y una hoja de ruta de lo que se desea decir. Una vez elaborado el esquema, llega el momento del primer borrador—el borrador en sucio —cuando se comienza a dar forma a las ideas. El primer borrador: escribir “en sucio” El primer borrador , también llamado borrador en sucio , es la etapa en la que simplemente se van escribiendo las ideas tal como llegan. Se puede seguir el esquema al pie de la letra o descubrir, como sucede a menudo, que surgen nuevas ideas mientras se escribe. Si es así, se deja que el esquema se adapte. El esquema existe para ser útil,  no para limitar. La función del borrador es organizar y desarrollar los pensamientos , no brillar. Cuando redacte el borrador, trate de no detenerse para pulir el estilo. Haga lo mejor que pueda, por supuesto, pero evite la tentación de revisar mientras escribe. Como bien ...

  Santiago Ramón y Cajal, in Los tónicos de la voluntad (1912), reminds us that  “Es vulgarísima verdad que, en grado variable, el afán de aprobación y aplauso mueve a todos los hombres…”  (it is a most commonplace truth that the desire for approval and applause moves all human beings, though to varying degrees.) More than a critique, his remark is an invitation to self-examination. We like to imagine ourselves guided solely by principle or pure curiosity, yet vanity quietly shapes our ambitions, our work, and even our acts of generosity. Cajal’s insight endures because it is both humbling and liberating. By acknowledging this universal longing for recognition, we can keep it in proportion—use it as a spur to effort without allowing it to dictate our values. In that balance lies the tonic he sought to offer: a clearer understanding of what truly motivates us and what, with discipline, elevates our will.

To keep fit physically is paramount. It is also important to keep our minds fit.  Read my article in VivaFifty.com about chess and the fit mind. 

  Outlining and Drafting: The Writer’s First Steps An outline is, in essence, a to-do list for writing . Nothing is more mysterious than that. It gives you a sense of direction, a roadmap for what you wish to say. Once your outline is sketched, you move on to the first draft—el borrador —where you begin to give shape to your ideas. The First Draft: Writing “en sucio” The first draft, also known as a rough draft , is the stage where you simply write down your ideas as they come. You may follow your outline closely or discover, as often happens, that new ideas appear while you write. If so, let the outline bend. It exists to serve you, not restrain you. A rough draft ’s purpose is to organize and develop thoughts , not to shine. When drafting, you should avoid stopping to polish your style. Do your best, of course, but resist the temptation to revise while writing. As Google aptly puts it: first drafts don’t have to be perfect; they just have to be written. The Second Draft : Shaping...

  The word mordida has become a fashionable term, seemingly on everyone’s lips these days. Why? Because a large segment of Spain’s current government has been implicated in various forms of corruption: the soliciting of sobornos , bribes, under-the-table payments, kickbacks, payoffs, and the like. Mordida conveniently encompasses all such illicit “cuts,” and the term itself was imported from the Americas, chiefly from Mexico. Although the word was not used during the forty-year dictatorship— for obvious reasons—the practice itself was almost certainly widespread. The fact that mordidas are now the talk of the town does not mean they were absent in earlier Spain; quite the opposite. As in many parts of the Americas, mordidas were part of the everyday political diet. As El Siglo (Panama, 04/10/2000) quoted La revista Alternativa : “el chanchullo y la mordida han pasado a ser expresiones normales del lenguaje cotidiano.” In English, payoff and kickback are strong and servicea...

  HAVE GOT TO El verbo to get tiene dos modalidades irregulares: to get, got, got y to get got gotten. Esta última es más empleada en EE.UU. Como sinónimo de to have, to have got, se ha aceptado siempre como buen inglés coloquial, familiar, aunque to have solo es más que suficiente. Esto puede explicarse por la parcialidad que tienen los hablantes por la fraseología y la tendencia de emplear más palabras de las necesarias. I have got a house by the sea, tengo una casa en la playa, puede expresarse bien, I have a house by the sea. Tener que, deber, to have to, must.   I’ve got to go , tengo que irme. Como to have to , I have to go , tengo que irme, I must go.  H. W. Fowler nos dice: "Gotten still holds its ground in American English..."