LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

 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.