LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

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

I always found William F. Buckley (1925-2008) unbearable, effete, and pedantic to the full extent of those words. His manner of speech was patronizing and stuck in his high horse. He is described by Wikipedia as "an American conservative writer, public intellectual, and political commentator." He always gave me the impression that he thought he was above the riffraff, the ragtag and bobtail of the American public. An obnoxious character. Check him out on YouTube. Today I listened to an interview he held with Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1886), again on YouTube , that treasure trove of arcane information. I was struck upon hearing Borges in English. He had the cadence, and sing-song musicality of Argentinian Spanish transferred to the English language, slurring most words into obscure sounds. Whether an interview is successful depends on the interviewer as much as on the interviewee and in this instance, Mr. Buckley blundered. Still, I urge you to hear Borges in English.     ...

  No es cierto que los cuervos vuelen en línea recta siempre, sin embargo, el dicho as the crow flies significa eso, en línea recta. El origen de la frase es desconocido a pesar de las muchas versiones graciosas que existen. Ya sabemos que a los hablantes de a pie les encanta sacarse etimologías chuscas de la manga. “ As the crow flies , my house is ten miles from New York.” “The town is fifty miles east as the crow flies .” “We have travelled as the crow flies , not by side roads or paths.” No hay que tomar la expresión literalmente porque es una manera de hablar que gusta y se emplea mucho.

  We all know that "salado" is salty. "La sopa está muy salada". The soup is very salty. "Salado" is also funny, charming, cute: "Tu hijo es un niño muy salado."  In Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, the meaning changes to unlucky, unfortunate. "David está muy salado" meaning that he is very unlucky.  However, in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay the meaning changes to expensive."  All these different meanings do not alter the fact that the core of the language, the grammatical structure of the language, is the same. This occurs in all languages.  

  When man noticed how practical language was, he decided to name everything, and has not stopped since. So, everything has a tag, a label, a name. The picture I have chosen is a "tree" in English, "Baum" in German, "arbre" in French and Valencian, "árbol" in Spanish, "albero" in Italian... and so on and so forth... about 6,500 different names for that picture, corresponding to the 6,500 languages we have globally. Some labels for this image seem exotic: "mti" in Swahili, "drzervo" in Polish, "puno" in Tagalog... That picture of the tree will remain the same, but man has named it in 6,500 different ways. This is a trivial piece of news, but worth bearing in mind, and is more important that meets the eye. More trivia: if each language has an average of 75,000 words, the total of vocabulary adds up to 487,500,000.- 

The study of language is neither more nor less complicated than the study of math, or history, or biology... except that the latter do not have to be pronounced. Ah, there´s the rub!  "You must understand this equation and then you have to pronounce it well, like a native mathematician!" Silly, right? This splitting of hairs shows the real problem behind language-learning: phonetics. I keep flogging a dead horse, but I will not tire of saying it. English is an easy language, but difficult to pronounce. Spanish is a difficult language and also difficult to pronounce. I know plenty of readers will differ and cry out loud that Spanish is written and pronounced exactly the same. I refer you to Tomás Navarro Tomás, Manual de pronunciación española . If there are many people who pronounce Spanish and English well, why shouldn´t you? Are you stupid or something? Say to yourself: If they can, I can!

Sólo permanece y dura el mudar, el cambio, y no hay nada estático. Por eso la palabra "lapso" que significaba tiempo entre dos límites, ahora es "lapso de tiempo" y no se considera redundante. Se acepta: ya ha pasado un largo lapso de tiempo.  "Tématico" era sólo adjetivo, ahora es también sustantivo: la temática del empleo, de la inmigración, como conjunto de temas parciales. El que llegaba a su hora era "puntual" y ahora significa también "concreto": un problema puntual. Y "remarcar" significaba volver a marcar, pero ha adquirido la idea de poner de relieve: Quiero remarcar lo bien que me trataron en Londres. Y si "tesitura" era disposición de ánimo, ahora también es circunstancia o situación: En esta tesitura, lo mejor es no actuar. (Continuará...)