LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

 Con las elecciones midterm recién celebradas en los Estados Unidos y las generales en España del 29 de noviembre de 2026, se oye a los políticos desgañitarse prometiéndolo todo, el oro y el moro. Ya dice el refrán que de prometer nadie se hizo pobre. Todo este ruido me ha traído a la memoria una frase que nos dijo mi profesor de Historia de los Estados Unidos en la Universidad de Duquesne, al hablarnos de las elecciones de aquellos años, en torno a la Gran Depresión: A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. El eslogan fue entonces muy traído y llevado y se ha atribuido a diversos políticos. Lo traigo a colación porque a los políticos les encantan los eslóganes simplistas, las promesas fáciles y las fórmulas que caben en una pancarta. El PSOE de Sánchez, después de más de ocho años de gobierno, promete ahora hacer todo lo que no ha hecho durante ese tiempo. Y quiere que los votantes le crean. Promete, salvando las distancias, un pollo en cada olla y un piso para cada jove...

A domestic flight is a flight taking place within the borders of a single country. The standard Spanish equivalent is vuelo nacional , although the calque vuelo doméstico is heard in several Latin American countries, particularly under the influence of English. I am writing this because yesterday I watched the television interview Isabel Díaz Ayuso, President of the Community of Madrid, granted to Canal 5, in which she used the expression vuelos domésticos when speaking about flights within Spain. Despite my admiration for her as a politician, I regret hearing her introduce this stowaway expression into Spanish. Before we know it, vuelos domésticos may well replace the established vuelos nacionales . You might protest: so what? What difference does it make whether we say nacional or doméstico when referring to flights within a country? Nothing of great consequence, really. I merely wish to point out the influence that persons of import can exert on our linguistic habits. Words sp...

  En el prólogo a mi libro Escribir y comunicar en inglés , escribe el profesor  Felipe Fernández-Armesto sobre su método de aprender idiomas, que consiste en memorizar poesía. Dice en ese prólogo el profesor de Notre Dame, insigne historiador y gran conocedor de los idiomas inglés y castellano: “ My own method of learning languages ought to disqualify me from introducing this book. I teach myself by reading poetry. Verse is memorable, because repetitive and often rhyming. And most cultures have a stock – a common culture – of poems familiar to everyone educated in the language concerned. So foreigners who quote them instantly forge the sort of bond of sympathy that enhances every experience of communication. ” Y yo añadiría a la poesía, la letra de canciones también. ¿Lo ponemos en práctica? Tenemos poco que perder.

 Tengo a mi alrededor gente a la que le encanta ponerme de los nervios, pincharme para que salte y pierda la calma. Esto, en román paladino, se llama buscarle las cosquillas a alguien o hacerle rabiar . Lo malo es que lo consiguen. Por mucho que trate de mantener la calma y no darles el gusto de verme sulfurado, they push my buttons, and I take the bait . Por ejemplo: Mi amigo Peláez sabe exactamente cómo hacerme rabiar hablando de política, lo que en inglés podríamos traducir como: My friend Peláez knows exactly how to push my buttons by talking about politics. Me gusta esta expresión inglesa porque lo de 'buttons' nos recuerda a 'tecla',  que en castellano también se usa figuradamente: tocar las teclas de alguien. He encontrado las siguientes citaciones de uso, para que no se diga: — “… but you don’t want to push his buttons because he can turn very vicious.” Sporting News , September 8, 2006. US. — “… and Jimmy would keep pushing her buttons until she’d lose her te...

Yesterday, someone who knows no English congratulated me on my mastery of the language. I have also been told that my Spanish is good. I take these compliments with a grain of salt, since they come from unqualified experts. The question of language proficiency is one I often ponder. The study of a language is a lifelong endeavor, and there is always something to learn, correct, or improve. If my reader is studying Spanish, allow me, by way of digression, to offer three pieces of advice: 1. Avoid the passive voice whenever possible. Do not say David ha sido visto when the more natural Han visto a David will do. Spanish often prefers the active construction where English readily resorts to the passive. 2. Use the progressive form only when it is needed. Do not say Estoy yendo a casa when Voy a casa expresses the same idea more naturally. The progressive is not a substitute for the simple present. 3. Learn the subjunctive thoroughly—and use it. Do not automatically translate as far as...

 I believe I have already mentioned the truism that society has taken great strides forward in its attitudes toward marriage and births out of wedlock. What was considered a sin and looked down upon a few generations ago may today pass without raising an eyebrow. The expression born on the wrong side of the blanket refers to someone born outside marriage. It is an old-fashioned, somewhat euphemistic way of describing what was once regarded as a social stigma. Given the changes in society's attitudes toward such births, one might assume that the expression has become obsolete. And yet, it continues to appear in literature: “I was born on the wrong side of the blanket.” Anya Seton, Winthrop Woman , 1958. “… those royal romances which always seemed to involve births on the wrong side of the blanket.”   Time magazine, February 21, 1969. “… born on the wrong side of the blanket.”  Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead , 2022. These examples might lead us to question whet...

Escucho y leo a literatos, profesores, periodistas, hombres de letras, que explican en artículos y entrevistas, que poseen en casa enormes bibliotecas con muchos, muchos libros. Es más, creo recordar que había un programa televisivo donde el reportero recorría bibliotecas privadas de famosos, cuyas estancias estaban  atiborradas de libros, colocados en estanterías, debajo de las mesas, en la cocina, en la bañera. Vi la de Amando de Miguel y Luis Alberto de Cuenca, y quizá otros cuyos nombres se han borrado de mi memoria senil. Arturo Pérez Reverte se ufana en las redes de tener 32.000 volúmenes en su casa. Recuerdo el horror de ver tantos libros desperdigados y apilados de mala manera. Un verdadero sinsentido. Aparte de la sabiduría tradicional, eso implica polvo, mucho polvo.  Saco mi ábaco y calculo: Si tengo 30.000 títulos y leo uno a la semana, sin saltarme ninguna semana, leeré 52 al año. Para leer los 30.000 libros necesitaré 577 años en números redondos. Claro que si le...

Postscript Whatever happened to Lewis Perelman, the man who predicted the demise of conventional education? He did not disappear immediately after publishing School’s Out in 1992. He continued to write and work on policy issues, and an interview published in 1997 shows him still defending his thesis.  Yet today, Perelman seems to have faded from public discussion, while the schools he declared obsolete are still standing. His predictions deserve revisiting. Perhaps that, too, is a lesson in the unpredictability of the future. Perhaps Dr. Perelman's mistake was not to predict that school would disappear, but to underestimate its capacity to survive. Or perhaps the real revolution is still to come. Dr. Lewis Joel Perelman, born in 1946, passed away on March 10, 2026. 

Has the internet and technology truly changed traditional classroom education? Are students learning more, and learning better? In 2002, while preparing the fourth volume of my English in Action , an English grammar for Spanish speakers ( hispanohablantes ), I wanted to make it a chrestomathy of educated English: a selection of passages designed to help learners master a language. I included poetry, short stories, newspaper articles, and literary essays. During my research, I came across a review in the Financial Times titled “Is Education Outdated?” It discussed Lewis Perelman's School's Out: Hyperlearning, The New Technology, and the End of Education , published by William Morrow in 1992. I found the review sufficiently persuasive to obtain permission to reprint it. According to the reviewer, Perelman argued that conventional education was obsolete and that investing in school reform was like investing in the horse and buggy at the dawn of the twentieth century while ignorin...

  Juan Antonio de Zunzunegui: notario 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 y reprodujo 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, en...

Some people on social media insist on challenging readers bilinguistically, telling them that certain words in Spanish or English do not exist in the other language. One such word is "apetecer" which dictionaries translate as feel like, craving, or even how about.  ¿Te apetece una pizza esta noche? / Lo siento pero no me apetece dar un paseo largo hoy. / ¿Seguro que te apetece? Segurísimo. Would that mean that the exact feeling or idea does not exist in the other language? Certainly not. The richness of our two languages is out there to be explored and studied. If we make the effort. The words may differ; the human experience does not. In English, we can translate the above three Spanish sentences: Ar e you up for a  for pizza tonight?  / Sorry, I am not up for a long walk today.    /  Are you sure you are up for it? Absolutely.   In a nutshell:  Be up for something = Apetecer and, of course, feel like and how about. 

The cruelty of human nature is well known. The cruelty directed at people with physical disabilities has a long and ugly history. Today, we congratulate ourselves on showing a certain degree of humanity in the way we refer to someone who limps or is missing a leg. Spanish has a particularly rich, and sometimes brutal, repertoire of colloquial expressions for such people. The following are examples: Patapalo Patachula Cojo Cojitranca Pataescombro Cojo de mierda Patituerto Patamula Today, euphemisms and more respectful expressions are increasingly the norm: persona con discapacidad motriz, persona con movilidad reducida, persona con cojera . We are now expected to say that David tiene movilidad reducida rather than call David a patachula or a cojitranca . Language changes, and so do our ideas of what is acceptable. Whether this change reflects greater humanity, greater sensitivity, or simply a different set of social conventions is another question.

I have made it a habit to watch the Princess of Asturias Awards on television every year, straight from Oviedo, Asturias. I enjoy the pomp and ceremony, the Asturian bagpipes, the Royal Family, the fanfare, and listening to the speeches delivered by some of the awardees. I also appreciate the fact that people’s efforts in the humanities, science, sports, and other fields, as well as the work of certain institutions, are recognised, publicised, and discussed in the media. And I am all for indulging another of my habits: learning, discovering new people and institutions, and finding out about the progress they are making. Yesterday, I discovered Patti Smith, the singer and writer. Imagine that, at this stage of my life! Timothy Garton Ash was also new to me, and I intend to read his work. His speech made me want to do so, which is surely one of the best things a speaker can achieve. Julian Barnes was not exactly brilliant in his short speech but, truth be told, I was listening to the dub...

 These days I am irritable and touchy. I feel like everyone is trying to push my buttons to see which way I'll jump. And I jump sky-high, lose my cool, and watch my blood pressure rocket up. As I live in Spain, what people are doing to me would be called hacer rabiar or buscarle las cosquillas . Of course, English has plenty of ways to describe people who are easy to provoke, and I am apparently one of them. I turn vicious when someone pushes my buttons. Whatever the case, learn this idiom and try not to rise to the bait.

 Hay expresiones que nacen en los tribunales y terminan en la calle, donde adquieren una vida mucho más amplia que la que les dieron los legisladores. Con premeditación y alevosía es una de ellas. En el uso corriente, viene a significar que algo se hace con malas artes, con intención deliberada y sin dar al otro la menor oportunidad de defenderse. No es poca cosa. El artículo 22 del Código Penal español, aprobado por la Ley Orgánica 10/1995, define la alevosía en estos términos: «Hay alevosía cuando el culpable comete cualquiera de los delitos contra las personas empleando en la ejecución medios, modos o formas que tiendan directa o especialmente a asegurarla, sin el riesgo que para su persona pudiera proceder de la defensa por parte del ofendido». Una definición que, dicho sea de paso, no se distingue precisamente por su ligereza. La premeditación, que figuraba en textos legales anteriores, desapareció como circunstancia agravante autónoma del Código Penal de 1995. La alevosía, s...

 The more I hear people express their thoughts in English and Spanish in everyday life, the more convinced I become that we need speech training. I have mentioned reading aloud before as an excellent exercise. Actors constantly practice and train their speech, and I believe we should also train ourselves to speak well every day. After all, the way we speak says a great deal about who we are and how we present ourselves to others. My recommendation is simple and easy to follow: read aloud for five to ten minutes a day. Read slowly; savor the sounds, pay attention to points of articulation, how you articulate each sound, and experiment with stressing sentences in different ways. Do not rush or stumble over your words. Easy does it. You may notice the results in a few weeks, perhaps even sooner. Your interlocutors will appreciate the difference. Try it. You have little to lose and much to gain. 

¿A dónde vamos a ir a parar? / What Is the World Coming To?   It’s the all-purpose sigh. Nobody expects an answer. You say it when the news is grim, when a scandal breaks, or when the kids do something that surely signals the end of civilization: Wars, wars … what is the world coming to? Or, if you’re reaching for the Spanish: Guerras, guerras… ¿a dónde vamos a ir a parar?   Examples: --“No sé a dónde vamos a ir a parar.” — Rosario Ferré, La batalla de las vírgenes (1993, Puerto Rico) --“No sé dónde vamos a ir a parar.” — Manuel Martínez Mediero, Las largas vacaciones de Oliveira Salazar (1991, Spain) --“Alice watched the little girl leave and muttered: What is the world coming to?” — Charles Martin, Thunder and Rain (2012, US) --“… Lord, have mercy! What is this world coming to?” — Mary Monroe, Bad Blood (2016, US)

ChatGPT me dice que, por "to rage bait", debería usar "provocar indignación, buscar el cabreo ajeno, provocar polémica, cebo para la indignación" en castellano.  Sé que no debiera "rage bait" al pobre ChatGPT, que anda corto de fraseología comparada y hace lo que puede con lo que tiene o con lo que le han enseñado. También es cierto que esta expresión es muy nueva en inglés para describir lo que en lengua española experimentamos con "hacer rabiar a alguien" o "buscarle las cosquillas a alguien". Claro que, como todavía no lo he publicado, ChatGPT no ha podido copiar mi Diccionario Fraseológico, español-inglés.  Ejemplo: Amelia did not answer because she suspected David was trying to rage bait her - Amelia no contestó porque suponía que David le estaba buscando las cosquillas. Amelia no contestó porque suponía que David la quería hacer rabias.

 Me van a permitir soltar un par de clichés lingüísticos y sociológicos: todo cambia, ya nada es como era en mis tiempos… Hablemos de los políticos. Pedro Sánchez le ha dado un vuelco al idioma en más de una ocasión con aquello de «mentir no es mentir, es cambiar de opinión». También ha quedado trastocado aquel viejo dicho que rezaba: «lo prometido es deuda», que los ingleses traducían literalmente como « promise is debt» . Este político, muy comunista él, promete a las masas empleos dignos y bien retribuidos, casas por doquier, más dinero para los pensionistas, transporte público de calidad y barato, frenar a la ultraderecha, canalla y maldita, y ponerla en la picota. Todo vale, porque ahora lo prometido ya no es deuda. Lo prometido no vale nada: es papel mojado, palabras que se lleva el viento y que pronto se olvidan. Y yo, que vivo en Las Batuecas, todavía creo en la palabra dada, en el honor, en la amistad, en la integridad; todavía creo que lo prometido es deuda.

 ¡Españoles y españolas! Hoy comparezco ante vosotros, no solo como presidente del Gobierno, sino como un hombre que cree en el futuro. Y os pregunto: ¿qué es el futuro sino el presente que todavía tenemos que mejorar? Hemos conseguido mucho. Muchísimo. Pero debemos hacer más. Porque hacer más no consiste simplemente en hacer más, sino en hacer lo que hay que hacer, cuando hay que hacerlo y para quienes hay que hacerlo. Algunos dicen que tenemos un problema. A quienes dicen que tenemos un problema, les digo: el problema no es que tengamos un problema. El problema es creer que un problema no puede convertirse en una oportunidad. Y nosotros convertiremos cada problema en una oportunidad, cada obstáculo en un peldaño y cada crítica en una prueba de que estamos avanzando. Porque España merece más. España exige más. Y este Gobierno, mi Gobierno, el Gobierno de todos los españoles, seguirá trabajando sin descanso, día tras día, noche tras noche, dejándose la piel, por una España más prós...

Reading some poetry by the brand-new Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Anne Carson, I was reminded of Guillermo de Torre, the Spanish ultraist poet, and of how Julio Casares took him to task in an article titled   «Hélices, por Guillermo de Torre» . Casares discusses ultraist poetry with considerable humor and a good deal of sarcasm. The article dates from 1920, 106 years before Carson won the Nobel Prize. Yet the two poets have something in common that is worth pointing out. Casares quotes a poem by de Torre entitled «Fotogenia»: Rostros, Muecas, Visajes Acordes faciales de la emoción iluminada Gestos dardeantes... Now consider these lines by Anne Carson: It's good to be neuter. I want to have meaningless legs. There are things unbearable. ................................................. It is curious how poetry repeats itself. A century separates these two writers, yet both seem to challenge our expectations of what a poem should say, and how it should say it. One was ridiculed ...

  “There is no problem that the mind of man can set, that the mind of man cannot solve.” I have always attributed this quotation to Dr. Samuel Johnson; however, it seems I was wrong. I have been unable to authenticate it from Johnson’s writings. Where, then, did I get it from? Google led me to Dr. Terence Meaden’s CV, in which he attributes these very words to Dr. Johnson. Misquotations abound, as do misattributions, but what are we to do about them? Must we double-check every quotation we encounter for the first time? I suggest that, when we cannot trace a quotation to its original source, we should at least identify the source from which we have taken it. In this case, we might write: “As Dr. Terence Meaden attributes it to Dr. Johnson in his online CV: ‘There is no problem that the mind of man can set that the mind of man cannot solve.’” It is not proof that Johnson said it, of course. But at least we are being honest about our source. Is that not preferable to perpetuating a po...

  I think the Nobel Prize in Literature is an event worth looking forward to. This year, 2026, it has been awarded to Anne Carson (1950–), a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, and teacher. I should have known that she was the recipient of the Spanish Princess of Asturias Award for Literature in 2020. I dutifully follow the proceedings on television from Oviedo every year in the fall, but somehow I missed her. This is therefore another of my literary confessions: I had never heard of Anne Patricia Carson. To my shame, I suppose. I tender my congratulations to her and to the English-language literary world. The fact that she has devoted so much of her life to Greek and classical literature in this day and age says something about her, and perhaps also about the enduring power of the humanities. We have someone comparable in Spain: Professor Irene Vallejo, author of the well-known El infinito en un junco ( Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World ). These two women have...

Shakespeare comes to our aid often, as in this case about brevity in speech and writing:   Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit , And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief . Your noble son is mad. . . . ( Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2. )

Writing is, in some respects, more difficult than speaking. There is greater scope for misunderstanding when the writer is not there to explain, qualify, or correct what he has written. Faulty punctuation, grammar, or syntax can distort or even deform one's meaning in ways that speech, with its intonation and immediate context, often prevents. But why should we attempt to write in English if we have another language at our disposal? Nathan Heller gives us an intriguing answer in The New Yorker . Writers able to choose their working languages—Joseph Conrad, Jorie Graham, Vladimir Nabokov—often end up writing in English because, as Conrad reportedly put it, “English is so plastic.”

1.      Active and selective reading. 2.      Acquisition of words. 3.      Study of basic grammar.  4.      Proper p unctuation. 5.      The ability to use reference books, on paper or online. 6.      The mindful care for one’s readers.

Plenty of jokes go around about women with a full wardrobe who claim they don't have a stitch to wear .  We hear that not only in English, but also in many other languages, I bet. No tengo nada que ponerme  I have heard many times in my married life. Carmen Martín Gaite, who was an expert on women, writes in her Usos amorosos en la posguerra española , 1987, "Yo no puedo ir. No tengo nada que ponerme." Not being a psychologist or sociologist, I ignore why females in general say this, contrary to fact and reality. It is a fact, however, that the ready-made phrase exists and can be attested in the American Scholar, for example, Autumn 2015, where we can read: "She seemed excited about the wedding, drawling that she hadn't a stitch to wear." I belong to a generation when men and women had few garments and wore the same day after day. So, I suspect that the expression is of recent coinage.  

I lost the hearing in my left ear when I was about six years old, owing to otitis media. This has certain advantages: at night I rest my right ear on the pillow and shut out the world. Everything becomes quiet and still, and I cannot oír el vuelo de una mosca —literally, “hear the flight of a fly.” As usual, English has a counterpart: one can hear a pin drop . Both expressions describe an extraordinary degree of silence. Try it sometime: go into a soundproof room, drop a pin, and listen. Or, better still, let a fly loose in the same room and see whether you can hear the flapping of its wings. How fascinating sound is—and how differently languages find ways of expressing its absence.

I have noticed of late that I suffer from short-timer’s syndrome (attitude) . At my age, I believe I have every right to suffer (enjoy?) this malady. At 88, I can afford to lose focus, motivation, and emotional attachments. I am now a short-timer , someone who is on borrowed time and doesn’t give a fig about anything. As someone said on NPR Morning (10/02/1998), “I’m a short-timer. What do I care?” And I often muse in Spanish: Para lo que me queda de estar en el convento… Fulgencio Argüelles put it more fully in Letanías de lluvia (1993): “Para el tiempo que me queda de estar en este convento, me cago dentro.” So there you have it:  Short-timer’s syndrome (attitude) — Para lo que me queda de estar en el convento, me cago dentro. “I’m a short-timer. What do I care?” NPR Morning , 10/02/1998. US. “… is himself a short-timer. He is about to turn 68 and is subject to mandatory retirement at age 70.” San Francisco Chronicle , 10/17/2004. US. “Short timer syndrome is the common term u...

 Sí, confieso: tengo el síndrome de «para lo que me queda de estar en el convento...». A mi edad ya no tengo por qué aguantar las necedades de políticos de poca monta; las bobadas de jovencitos que apenas han salido del cascarón; las letanías de hombres-niños que pontifican sobre sus derechos y olvidan sus obligaciones; las malversaciones de un gobierno corrupto que incluso se vanagloria de serlo; las milongas de socialistas y comunistas, que ya resultan vomitivas; los paternalismos hacia los mayores, a quienes los jovenzuelos consideran trastos viejos... En fin, tengo the short-timer syndrome . A fuerza de acumular años, las veo venir de lejos. Es un aburrimiento. Es como ver la misma película dos o tres veces, conociendo ya el desenlace. No pienso permitir que un chiquilicuatre mocoso me mire por encima del hombro, en televisión, y me diga que su gestión, nefasta por demás, es buena. Hasta aquí hemos llegado los que tenemos el síndrome de «para lo que me queda de estar en el conv...

 "To wait and find out the true facts or details of a situation before you make a decision or take any action" is expressed in English with the idiom "see how the land lies." And my Random House Dictionary gives this example of usage: "You should see how the land lies before making a proposal." In Spanish, we should also be careful before acting, and we have expressions like: "tantear el terreno" or "ver cómo está el patio."  We must see how the land lies before we enter into an agreement with them.  Debemos tantear al terreno antes de firmar un acuerdo con ellos. Unfortunately, I often rush in without first seeing how the land lies. My bad.

He encontrado este pasaje de mi El laberinto del idiomas inglés que, aunque fue escrito hace años, me parece que conserva cierta actualidad. Lo he retocado un poco. Siempre se ha dicho en España que la enseñanza en los Estados Unidos era de risa, de cuchufleta casi; que los norteamericanos no sabían ni dónde estaba España y que creían que en Madrid comían enchiladas y cebaban yerba mate, y que todos los españoles eran toreros, toreadores . Pues mire usted por dónde: como todo se importa de América, lo bueno y principalmente lo malo, ahora en España pasa lo mismo. Hay muchos jóvenes que no saben dónde está San Francisco ni qué país limita al norte de los EE.UU., si México o Argentina. Tampoco aquí parecen saber mucho de matemáticas ni de idiomas. En los Estados Unidos millones estudian castellano. En España millones estudian inglés. Y les va mal a todos esos millones. Es cierto que un ingeniero de minas en España tiene que estudiar mucho más que uno en los EE. UU. Sin embargo, los españ...

  Cada oveja, con su pareja Birds of a feather flock together Juan y Susana se han casado. Imagínate. Cada oveja con su pareja John and Susan got married.  Imagine. Birds of a feather flock together — “Todos debemos ayudarlas a que encuentren su mozo, cada oveja con su pareja...” Andrés Berlanga, La gaznápira , 1984. Esp. Oveja negra de la familia Black sheep of the family Emilia Pardo Bazán era la oveja negra de la familia Emilia Pardo Bazán was the black sheep of the family — “Escritor en toda la extensión de la palabra y oveja negra de su familia.” Excélsior, 04/09/2001. Méx. Oveja que bala, bocado pierde A bleating sheep loses a bite, you snooze, you lose Deja de quejarte y trabaja, que oveja que bala, bocado pierde Stop whining and work because a bleating sheep loses a bite — “… y como la oveja que bala bocado pierde, todos callaban, que comer y callar sabe que rabia; sólo se oían de vez en cuando los sorbitones al caldo.” Javier Fuentes y Ponte, Murcia...

Los traductores de guiones televisivos no tienen perdón de Dios y algún día pagarán por sus pecados en el limbo de los saqueadores y destrozadores de idiomas. Se oye cada frase traducida que hace pensar si el traductor estaba borracho cuando trabajaba o había perdido la razón. Sólo un ejemplo de una película de Walter Matthau, Mrs. Lambert Remembers Love (1991), donde el actor, y hablando de historia, le pregunta a un niño: “¿Sabes ya la dirección de Lincoln en Gettysburg?” Y el niño contesta que no, todavía no. A ddress es dirección, pero también discurso y Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address no es la dirección de Lincoln in Gettysburg, sino  es el famoso discurso que el presidente dio para inaugurar un cementerio en Gettysburg, Pensilvania, el 16 de noviembre de 1863 y que comienza “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”    ¿En qué estaba ...

Just as we cannot watch two different television channels at the same time, we should not mix languages indiscriminately. When speaking Spanish, pretend it is the only language at your command. If you are talking to a Mexican, for instance, she should have no reason to guess—or even suspect—that you speak English. To me, this is true bilingualism. Never take the easy way out and dip into English simply because you cannot immediately find the Spanish expression you need. Keep your languages at bay and adhere to my made-up motto: “A place for every language and every language in its place.” Keep a tight rein on your linguistic “crutches” and fillers in both languages. They can be a dead giveaway of the language—or even the cultures—you have acquired. Pretend you are a spy speaking English: you cannot give yourself away by suddenly introducing Spanish into your speech. And vice versa. A now-deceased neighbor of mine in Pittsburgh used to drive me to despair by switching from one language ...

  A golden key will open any door  Dádivas quebrantan peñas Give him some money and he will do it; remember that a golden key will open any door. Dale un dinero y lo hará; recuerda que dádivas quebrantan peñas. — “A golden key will open every lock.” Bem Le Hunte, There, Where the Pepper Grows , 2006. US. Be all keyed up  Estar hecho un manojo de nervios; tener los nervios de punta I’m all keyed up today.  Estoy hecho un manojo de nervios hoy. — “… the little kids zooming around, all keyed up for Santa.” The Southern Review , vol. 54, no. 1, 2019. US.

 I venture to propose that in all languages, speakers doubt and hesitate about usage. This is normal, but it is our responsibility to be alert and learn the right way to use grammar, vocabulary, and phraseology. I remember a friend saying in Spanish le echaron con quejas destempladas , instead of the correct cajas destempladas . Of course, cajas destempladas makes no sense, but it is the correct form of the idiomatic expression. Today I was torn between beside the point and besides the point . So I checked. The Spanish venir o no venir a cuento (al caso) has the English equivalent be beside the point . William L. Miller, in his Media and Voters (1991), writes: “Whether Congress and the President behave in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is beside the point.” In case of doubt, check it out. There is usually a reason behind our linguistic misgivings.

It's a Long Lane that Has no Turning Some proverbs are worth keeping in your back pocket for difficult times. This is one of them. “It’s a long lane that has no turning.” The image is simple: a lane that seems endless, with no bend in sight. But every lane turns eventually. The proverb means that a difficult situation will eventually change. Spanish has several ways of expressing the same idea: No hay mal que cien años dure. No misfortune lasts a hundred years. No hay bien ni mal que cien años dure (ni gitano que lo aguante). The longer version adds a touch of humor: neither good nor bad lasts a hundred years, nor could anyone stand it for so long. No hay calleja sin revuelta. There is no little street without a bend. This is perhaps the closest equivalent to the English proverb. Siempre que ha llovido, ha parado. Whenever it has rained, it has stopped. The images are different, but the message is the same: difficult times do not last forever. I particularly like no hay bien n...

El cliché puro y duro , que significa recalcitrante, obstinado, sin paliativos, en estado puro, y cuyos equivalentes aproximados en inglés serían hardcore o die-hard , está documentado al menos desde 1807, aunque es a partir de los años ochenta del siglo XX cuando comienza a generalizarse. Pilar Valera ha escrito, cómo no, un libro titulado Amor puro y duro . Iván de la Torre le da una nueva vuelta: «La única y cierta terapia contra la inacción y la desidia es el enfrentamiento duro y puro...» Tenemos además citaciones de Luis María Anson, Javier Cercas y de la prensa, donde encontramos abundantes ejemplos de este recurso expresivo: lenguaje «puro y duro», como escribe Santos Sanz Villanueva en El Cultural (20/5/2004): «... y hace una narración de pensamiento pura y dura». Pudiera ser un calco del francés pur et dur , pero no se puede atestiguar fehacientemente en francés antes de 1808, mientras que el castellano puro y duro ya está documentado en 1808. No aparece en el DRAE ni en M...

Las listas tienen mucho prestigio entre los ignorantes. Hay listas de los mejores restaurantes, de las películas más taquilleras, de las mujeres más guapas y... de los libros más leídos. Hoy, por casualidad, me he topado con una de esas listas en Internet que me ha llamado la atención: los tres libros más leídos de la historia. El primero era la Biblia . El segundo, El libro rojo de Mao . ¿ El libro rojo de Mao es el segundo libro más leído del mundo? Recuerdo que en mi juventud, hace ya muchos años, circulaba en traducción al castellano entre los jóvenes progres. Era un librito pequeño, de tapas rojas —cómo no—, recopilado por el entonces dictador de China, Mao Zedong. Nunca lo abrí y nunca tuve curiosidad por hacerlo. Yo pensaba que un dictador responsable de la muerte de millones de personas poco podía decirme que influyese afirmativamente en mi vida. Tampoco he leído Mein Kampf , de Adolf Hitler, otro personaje entregado a la sangre y a la destrucción. De estos libros, sus respect...