LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

We may be patient, understanding, tolerant — even lenient — with our opponents, but there is a limit to everything, and sooner or later we must put an end to our forbearance. The formula for doing so is simple: “this is as far as we go” — or, in Spanish, “hasta aquí hemos llegado.” Phraseology, of course, provides alternatives. We might say “this is the end of the road,” suggesting that no further progress is possible. Or we might declare “the buck stops here,” a phrase associated with Harry S. Truman , which emphasizes the assumption of responsibility rather than merely the setting of a limit. These expressions are related, but not strictly synonymous; each carries its own nuance. All, however, may serve to halt impertinence, insolence, or downright impudence. In A Game with Dice (2004), Andrew Arnold writes: “This is as far as we go, I’m sorry.”

  Sé que todos los escritos sobre autoayuda animan a ser positivos.  Debemos también adoptar una actitud positiva al escribir. En las frases trataremos de ser afirmativos y evitaremos la forma negativa. Esta recomendación vale para cualquier lengua. Por ejemplo, la inglesa:   En vez de :                                                      Escribiremos : That is not true                                              That is a lie They are not tall        ...

Como sufro lo que en inglés se denomina bag lady syndrome —ese temor irracional a acabar en la ruina, cargado con las bolsas de la vida— estoy obsesionado con el dinero  en toda índole de aspectos. No recomiendo este síndrome a nadie, pero it is what it is , ¡qué le vamos a hacer! Todo me parece caro, y cualquier precio me suena a una barbaridad, una pasta, un Potosí, un Congo, un riñón, y siempre digo que lo que he comprado me ha salido por un ojo de la cara, por un huevo... Un mal vivir. Y lo peor es que expreso esta idea en inglés también, para más sufrimiento, y explico a mi familia y amistades anglófonas that I have paid an arm and a leg por algo, o   a pretty penny, a fortune, a bomb, the earth, a bundle, a pretty packet, a ton, a great deal. Si todo os parece caro, si queréis dramatizar el montante abonado, echad mano de esta lista en inglés. Sale gratis. De momento. — “Taking part in this event, and thus making a gift to the agencies, costs a pretty penny.” Portsmou...

 On Instagram, I read and hear how some peddle Spanish lessons, proclaiming: “Speak Spanish like a native!” Horrors, I say to myself in anguish. What exactly does that mean? And in my ignorance, I ask: what do they mean by “native”? I take it as read that those trying to teach the language assume we all know the meaning of the word. But do we? That Spanish politician in Congress who gets tongue-tied is a “native.” Another politician, who does not know the difference between the singular and the plural ( lo impuesto vs. los impuestos ), is also a “native” speaker. On TV, we hear “natives” blundering with prepositions, while others seem to ignore the true meaning of the words they utter. And plenty disregard the subjunctive. Those in Spanish-speaking countries who say “mu,” “pa,” “naide,” “na” are native-born. There are millions of “natives” one should perhaps avoid emulating altogether. Alas, those who try to acquire a foreign language remain at the mercy of what “natives” declar...

        Los cambios idiomáticos, sean de la índole que sean, no siempre son para mejor, y prueba de ello es el tránsito que desde hace algún tiempo se observa entre oír y escuchar .      Tradicionalmente teníamos tres verbos bien diferenciados: oír , percibir sonidos; escuchar , prestar atención a lo que se oye; y entender , comprender el significado de lo oído. “Oigo hablar” significa que mis oídos perciben a alguien hablar, sin que ello implique comprensión. “Escucho a alguien hablar” quiere decir que presto atención a lo que dice, aunque no necesariamente lo entienda. “Entiendo a alguien cuando habla” resume el proceso completo: oigo, presto atención y comprendo lo que se dice.      Sería una pérdida para el castellano que, por ignorancia o dejadez, se desdibujara la diferencia entre estos tres verbos.

 Have you ever felt the sudden urge to slip away from a boisterous party? Or that creeping cabin fever that drives you out the door and far from the family hubbub? To make yourself scarce, to quit the scene quietly—without ceremony, without goodbyes? English has a piquant idiom for it: to take French leave . The striking feature is not the act itself, but the finger it points. The French, we are told, are to blame for this lapse in manners. But the French are not so docile. They retaliate with filer à l’anglaise —“to slip away English-style”—squarely laying the charge at Britain’s door. And then come the Spaniards, who tilt the scale in favor of the Brits and say despedirse a la francesa —“to say goodbye in the French manner.” Once again, it is the French who bear the brunt of the discourtesy. In both French and Spanish usage, the act implies bad manners: one ought to take leave properly. In the United States, however, slipping out quietly may be seen as a considerate gesture—a...

Partes de la anatomía humana son tabú en la conversación finolis. Sin embargo, el idioma crea todo tipo de alternativas, de eufemismos más o menos conseguidos para referirse a esa parte de la anatomía humana que se pueda considerar tabú. La parte inferior de la espalda se conoce como nalgas, que tiene, tanto en lenguaje estándar como vulgar, numerosas posibilidades. Las que reseño aquí tienen autenticidad escrita en mi Gran diccionario del argot: el sohez . Veamos: asentaderas, brisero, bul, bull, bulla, bullarengue, cacas, cachas, calicatas, culamen, culata, culera, culete, culibajo, culo, cachetes del culo, culo de pera, culo gordo, culón, culona, donde la espalda pierde su casto nombre, fondillo, fullín, glúteos, jebe, nalgas, nalgatorio, pandero, pompis, popa, popó, posaderas, posteridad, rabo, retaguardia, retambufa, rulé, saco, saco de la mierda, superculo, tirapedos, tras, trasero. La lista podría seguir, porque el lenguaje no conoce límites cuando se trata de rodear lo que no s...

The piropo was once the order of the day on Spanish streets. As social attitudes have evolved, this type of street compliment has largely faded, or at least become far less publicly acceptable. As a child, my mother and I would walk to meet my father. On the way, we passed a military barracks where a Spanish GI stood on guard. One day he addressed a piropo to my mother. Small as I was, I turned around and kicked his shin so hard that, startled, he dropped the rifle he was holding. I have never tolerated men harassing women. Spanish, however, remains lexically inventive when it comes to describing female attractiveness — sometimes playful, sometimes coarse, often revealing of a cultural attitude that blends admiration with objectification. MUJER atractiva cf. (afines): bollicao, bollo, bomba, bombón, bombonazo, buenorra, como un camión, cañón, cañonazo, chorba, para comérsela, esculpida, estupenda, guaperas, jaca, maciza, monada, monumento, de bandera, negraza, perchas, perita en dul...

Humankind is aggressive—physically and verbally—and both forms are dangerous. Verbal aggression in the shape of insults is widespread across languages, and I would venture to suggest that son of a bitch is one of the most widespread of them, at least in the Western world. I stand to be corrected. The expression has generated its euphemisms. In English, we find softened variants such as son of a bee , son of a biscuit , the jocular son of a gun , and the abbreviation SOB . One newspaper writes: “…but he is a damn son of a bee and yet I am very happy he was not killed” (News 24, November 24, 2017, U.S.). Y, claro, el castellano también recurre a atenuaciones del antiguo hijo de puta : hijo de pu , hijo de la Gran Bretaña , hijo de su madre … expresiones que suenan menos fuertes. The pattern itself— son of a + X , hijo de + X —is strikingly productive. Needless to say, I reject both such verbal aggression and violence in all its forms.

  “To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,” Hamlet tells us, with his usual gift for turning a simple human activity into a metaphysical problem. Sleep, it seems, is never just sleep. How many hours should we sleep? Six? Seven? Eight? Nobody quite agrees. What does seem clear is that people like sleeping a lot—or at least, they like talking about it. Both Spanish and English offer a generous range of expressions to describe sleeping more than what is considered normal, whatever normal may be. Spanish, for instance, is particularly imaginative. One can dormir a pierna suelta , or sleep como un lirón, una marmota, un santo, un bendito, un leño, un tronco, un ceporro , or simply profundamente . The sleeper is likened, variously, to animals, holy figures, and large, immobile objects—none of them especially alert. English is no less resourceful. One may sleep like a log , sleep soundly , or sleep like a baby, a top, a rock, a princess, the dead, or a stone . Here, too, ...

  HORROR Gustar horrores (un horror)  Like an awful lot Marta me gusta horrores I like Martha an awful lot — “La salsa, sin embargo, me gusta horrores.” Antonio Vergara, Comer en el país valencià , 1981. Esp. Tener horror a Dread, fear, have a horror of Le tengo horror al trabajo I dread work — “… sobre todas las cosas, el diablo tiene horror a la sal.” Alberto Cousté, Biografía del Diablo , 1978. Arg. Un horror A sight Margarita es un horror Margaret is a sight — “¡Este niño es un horror, señora!" El Mundo, 20/08/1994. Esp.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Decía William Safire, muy agudo él, que “Last, but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.” Evitar el cliché es cosa difícil, por mucho empeño que pongamos, porque se nos viene a las mientes constantemente y es, además, el recurso más fácil. Si somos conscientes de qué es un cliché, quizá podamos darle de lado y sustituirlo por una imagen más novedosa o más precisa. Hoy quiero fijarme en un cliché firmemente arraigado en la lengua española: ser pasto de las llamas .  Si pasto es alimento o aquello que nutre el funcionamiento de algo, “pasto de las llamas” designa lo que da vigor y sustento al fuego. Me percaté del uso machacón de esta expresión con motivo del incendio de la torre Windsor de Madrid, el trece de febrero de 2005, cuando en todas las telenoticias se repetía sin descanso. Algunas emisoras retransmitieron el incendio en directo durante más de doce horas, y, como la catástrofe dio mucho que hablar, periódicos y tertulias recurrieron al mismo tópico. El clich...

Idea de bombero (jubilado) , propia de persona torpe, estúpida y sin ingenio; idea descabellada, absurda, que no tiene ni pies ni cabeza. El origen de la expresión es incierto y la etimología popular propone, como siempre, "explicaciones de bombero". Eduardo Mendoza la emplea  en su novela La verdad sobre el caso Savolta (1975): "Nicolás tiene ideas de bombero". También aparece en Los renglones torcidos de Dios (1979) de Torcuato Luca de Tena.  La lengua inglesa no es manca y también expresa la misma idea con las siguientes posibilidades:  Harebrained (horseback, half-baked, madcap, screwball, crackpot) opinion (idea), y Paul Green et al. ,  Paul Green’s Wordbook  (1998), explican su uso así: “A horseback opinion. A hurried judgement or opinion, guesswork.” Lo cual demuestra que, en cuestiones idiomáticas, en todas partes cuecen habas.

It is a truism that language is in a state of flux: new words are constantly coined, and others die, disappear, or quietly fade away. While writing a recent post about Webster’s New World Dictionary , I reread Charlton Lair’s essay “Language and the Dictionary” (1901–1984) and was reminded of a small but telling curiosity he notes about language. The entire article is a gem, not only for what it says about English, but for its view of language in general as a means of communication—not only among humans, but also between humans and animals. Let me quote Professor Lair: “…farm animals are not much called in well-hedged England, where they cannot stray widely, but when such animals were turned loose in the pastures of the New World, calling became a useful farm practice having relatively regional distributions. Chickens are called in Pennsylvania by shouting Bee! , but not in Virginia, where Coo-chee! and Coo-Chickie! are common, nor in New England, where Biddie and Widdie predomi...

  Poseo el Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second College edition , 1970, con David B. Guralnik (1920-2000) como Editor in Chief . Me lo traje de Pittsburgh y es un buen diccionario, serio y riguroso, que preside mi mesa de trabajo. Omite palabrotas ( old, well-known vulgate terms ) porque, según explica Guralnik en su Foreword : "...there is still objection in many quarters to the appearance of these terms in print..." Han pasado 56 años de su publicación y en los nidos de antaño, ya no hay pájaros hogaño, y la sociedad acepta todo tipo de "four-letter words" y "racial inuendos" y "obscenities" como si tal cosa. ¿Se ha quedado anticuado? Lo consulto con frecuencia, junto a mi Random House Dictionary , de 1999, para Windows, que me ayuda mucho a comprender y emplear de manera culta la terminología estándar de la lengua inglesa. Creo acertado consultar diccionarios antiguos y compararlos con los contemporáneos, ya que ...

  When we make an embarrassing blunder, a faux pas, an indiscretion, or put our foot in it, we might use expressions like let me die , I wanted to crawl under the carpet , I wanted the earth to swallow me or I wanted to curl up and die , all of which describe our mindset of shame, embarrassment, uneasiness, or discomfort. Naturally, those feelings in English can also be expressed in Spanish: Tierra, trágame or its variant que se me trague la tierra, as illustrated by the Colombian Santiago Gamboa ( Páginas de vuelta , 1998):   “… lo mira fijo y él piensa trágame tierra…”  Human feelings and mindsets are universal and can be expressed in all languages, albeit in different ways. L anguages don’t just name  the same emotions differently—they stage them differently.