LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

  Let me muse about a situation where an English friend of mine is a well-known dresser, dandy, and fop who sets the standard of men's fashion in the English-speaking world. His suits are impeccable and true works of art admired by all. As his reputation as a dapper has crossed borders and even reached Spain, I asked him to let me borrow one of his suits to cut a good figure at a soirée in Madrid where King Felipe VI would be attending. My friend lent me one of his best suits and I flew back to Spain and went straight to a good tailor to make some adjustments. At the fitting, I asked for the pants to be slim-cut, and lappels narrowed to conform to modern taste. The tailor agreed to shorten the jacket and sleeves as well. At the soirée, people commented that although the suit was okey, it was nothing to write home about and some dared remark that they were baffled by my friend's reputation as a dandy. Of course, I never mentioned my alterations to it. Translations may compare to...

  No hace mucho oí al político español Ivan Espinosa de los Monteros hablando en inglés en Instagram. Me sorprendió su nivel, su pronunciación y declamación propios de un nativo muy culto. Hasta tuve mis dudas. Hoy le he escuchado hablando del Presidente Ronald Reagan, pero pronunciando el nombre como Rígan, y no "Raygun" que es la pronunciación apropiada. Tengo por el señor Espinosa de los Monteros un gran respeto y admiración. Es un político sensato, educado, y muy preparado que me da pie, ahora, para incidir en que el bilingüismo incluye la pronunciación correcta de nombres, geografía, gastronomía, medicina, etc. en los dos idiomas. De paso enfatizo que con el inglés no podemos, nunca, fiarnos en cuestiones de pronunciación. No bajemos la guardia y nos aventuremos a pronunciar palabra o nombre basándonos en nuestra experiencia pasada. Con la fonética inglesa cuando menos lo pensamos salta la liebre. 

El alfabeto inglés contiene 26 letras y el español 27, que posee la ñ adicional, y sin embargo la ñ se encuentra en diccionarios de lengua inglesa. Palabras como piña , piñata , mañana , niño , señor , señorita , cañon (sin acento), jalapeño se incluyen, tal cual, como palabras inglesas aunque la ñ no figure en su alfabeto. El sonido ñ, claro, existe en inglés aunque representado de diferentes maneras, annual , gnu, manual.  El sonido de ñ existe en portugués, italiano, valenciano, francés..., pero sólo en castellano se representa con un único grafema: Ñ. ¿Tiene el inglés una manga más ancha y acepta hasta grafemas inexistentes en esa lengua? ¿Es más acomodaticio? O quizá simplemente más práctico. El Random House Webster's Unabridge Dictionary que poseo define mañana como tomorrow; the indefinite future . Y el  Webster's  New World Dictionary says of mañana: Tomorrow. At some indefinite time in the future que me recuerda a Mariano José de Larra y su "Vuelva usted mañan...

  "The sole advantage in possessing great works of literature lies in what they can help us to become." Introduction, Three Philosophical Poets .

I asked Camilo José Cela for a brief prologue to my 1997 An English and Spanish Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional Language . He wrote it and asked me to his place in Puerta de Hierro several times. I showed him a few pages of my project on a Spanish Dictionary of Slang. Cela liked it but suggested I use backup citations for every entry. Foolhardily I dived into the project not realizing the amount of work it was to take. After two years and reading over 800 books, I had the manuscript ready. Víctor García de la Concha , then Director of the Real Academia Española , refused to allow me to use the CREA or CORDE, data bases that were almost ready for public use. I went to the Academia's library every day, from 10 to 1, for a month, to check the citation files. In 2000 Larousse published Gran Diccionario del argot, el sohez . McGraw-Hill brought out the US edition and Ediciones del Serbal also published two additional editions.  Cela suggested I use the word soez for the dicti...

  The Hispanic world celebrates today La Fiesta de la Hispanidad, when the Americas were discovered from a European point of view. World history has not been the same since. In 1992, Europe witnessed, in awe and perplexity, the discovery of a New World. A new world, imagine! It left Europeans in shock. And here we are, celebrating the melding of cultures and traditions using one language, Spanish. So, Feliz Día de la Hispanidad y Fiesta Nacional,12 de octubre.      

When I was a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the  University of Pittsburgh ,  Dr. Mario Pei , Mellon Visiting Professor, a renowned linguist, and expert on comparative linguistics, asked me to write a paper on English-Spanish idioms. Later, at  Scranton University , I expanded that work and compiled many index cards, which I took, in files, to  Franklin and Marshall College , where I joined the Modern Language Department. When I moved to Madrid, all those cards were left behind and later lost in a fire. In 1995  Ediciones del Serbal  published my  A Phraseological Dictionary, English-Spanish , 383 pp. with the aid of an IBM PC1 computer. I was not wholly satisfied and wanted to rewrite it and make it a complete work on comparative phraseology, and in 2020 I found time to roll up my sleeves, spit on my hands, and finish the task once and for all. Now, with 34,000 idioms, 68,000 usage examples in both languages, 7,000 citations, and 1.530 pages, I am conf...