LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

  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...

  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...

  Language -any language- has a dearth of possibilities that man refuses to admit. We prefer to think that language is a limitless tool at our service. We may believe we can express our thoughts adequately using words but, unfortunately, language does not stretch that much. Feelings and emotions are hard to pin down with words, words whose meanings change in time, and with customs and conventions. There will always be a gap between what we are trying to convey and the words we actually use. Language is not a static entity so please do not be deceived, and remember that language is not a precision tool. 

Due to a gruesome crime perpetrated by a Spaniard upon a Colombian in Thailand, the Peninsular media have been dealing with this news daily for several weeks. Hundreds of journalists have been deployed to Bangkok to report the latest information on the incident, with videos and interviews with locals, and the Thai police handling the case. The input has been chaotic, contradictory, and misleading. Why? The glitch is language, the original languages are Spanish and Thai. Few Spaniards speak Siamese and even fewer Thais speak Spanish. So, they have been communicating in English. And chaos and a Chinese fire drill have set in. Spanish journalists have a shallow smattering of basic English while the locals have a passing very basic acquaintance with it. Both claim they speak the language but reality says otherwise. And the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I have witnessed on TV how a Spanish journalist asked a Thai policeman an incomprehensible question only to hear a nonsense respon...

Basándome en en el anuncio de Apple, Inc. de 1997, dediqué mi libro “Escribir y comunicar en inglés”, con prólogo del profesor Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, así: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who are not satisfied and continue studying English and Spanish. The ones who seek language perfection and work hard to achieve it.” Y esta dedicatoria la hago buena para todos los que leen mis entradas aquí, en Instagram.