LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

  These days, aired and fomented by the present Socialist-Cumunist Spanish Government, the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War is all the rage. The war ended 86 years ago and left the country in shambles, with one million dead, cities destroyed, and the countryside deserted. During the post-war period, with Europe fighting the Second World War, Spain had to endure the new dictatorship of General Franco. My father, Delfín Carbonell Marshall, spent almost 2 years in a concentration camp (he wrote about it, and it can be read in Sánchez Drago's  La Retaguardia ). These days, I repeat, socialists and communists are fanning the flames again, remembering a period before they were born, but averring they were eyewitnesses to the daily atrocities of the dictatorship. I lived through that period, but I advise those interested in what daily life was like under Franco's dictatorship to read the  novels of that period, such as those of Juan Antonio de Zunzunegui  (1901-1982) . Some ...

Oigo a hispanohablantes apoyar algunos de sus argumentos citando refranes que yo jamás he oído, y a su "abuela" como fuente de su veracidad. Yo prefiero apoyarlos con citaciones fehacientes.  Eso de "esto es así porque lo digo yo" no reza conmigo. Como de muestra vale un botón, veamos un dicho y su traducción al inglés, con apoyos literarios:  La ocasión hace al ladrón.  Opportunity makes the thief. Que en latín se decía Occasio facit furem . — “Vuesa merced perdone el atrevimiento, que la ocasión hace al ladrón: hallé la puerta abierta y entréme, dándome ánimo al entrarme venir a servir a vuesa merced, y no con palabras.” Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Entremés del vizcaíno fingido , 1615 . España. || “La ocasión hace al ladrón…”  Emilia Zanders, Breve historia de la ópera , 1992 . Venezuela. || “En La ocasión hace al ladrón , Agustín Moreto Cabaña trata el parangón posible…”  Reynaldo González, El bello habano. Biografía íntima del tabaco , 1998 . Cuba....

  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...

In learning a second language, our aim should be to attain the highest possible level of proficiency. We should cultivate all five skills: speaking , listening , pronunciation , reading , and writing . Our aspirations should be limitless. Yet we often take our mother tongue for granted, assuming we command it fully when in fact we may not. At times, we even strive so earnestly to master a new language that we begin to neglect our first means of communication. True bilingualism means handling both languages at an equal level. I invite you to read my article on this subject in VivaFifty .

  BILINGUAL BICULTURAL   In the early fifties, as a young boy, I crossed the Atlantic aboard a TWA Super Constellation propeller airplane from Madrid. After many hours, we landed at Idlewild Airport in New York. A tallish, thin, blond young boy reached America and immediately felt at home. “This is home at last”, I said to myself, and thus started my love affair with this country. What was it about Idlewild, the Greyhound bus that took me to Pittsburgh, a nine-hour ride, the people around me… It was a feeling of contentedness, of a certain joy, of adventure and emotion. All seemed new, fresh, and different, so different from my adopted city of Madrid, where I have never truly felt at home to this day. I had my first Coke, my second Coke, my third Coke during that long trip through Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh, the Smokey City, as it was then called. I was better off than most because I spoke English and was able to understand and make myself understood to the astonishmen...

Don Pancracio Celdrán, defensor acérrimo del idioma Mi buen amigo Don Pancracio Celdrán (1942–2019) fue siempre un firme defensor del idioma, vehemente y directo en el ataque. En nuestras conversaciones se sulfuraba al comentar lo mal que se expresan muchos escritores de hoy. Esa misma indignación la vertía en sus escritos, que recomiendo vivamente. Durante años dirigió un consultorio lingüístico en El Semanal , donde ejerció una labor esclarecedora y combativa. Sirva como muestra esta cita suya, de una franqueza sin filtro que solo él sabía manejar: “...energúmenos de la cultura… salvajes… quienes deciden rebelarse contra las normas del idioma, la sintaxis y todo ese andamiaje de la lengua sostenido por la tradición.” —Pancracio Celdrán Gomáriz, America Reads Spanish , 20/9/2006. Un testimonio más de su pasión por la lengua y de su inquebrantable defensa de la tradición idiomática.

Viendo a los dirigentes de sindicatos españoles actuales, oyéndo las inanidades ripiosas y trasnochadas que dicen, obervando cómo visten y gesticulan y viven en el siglo XIX, me ha venido a las mientes una cita de mi amigo Fernándo Sánchez Dragó , (1936-2023) hombre valiente como pocos, sin pelos en la lengua:  “Pertenecer a un sindicato es para mí (y que se pique quien quiera), (…) síntoma casi inequívoco de que el propietario o usuario del carnet de marras carece de dignidad, desconoce el sentido del honor y no es precisamente un émulo de don Quijote.” ( Libertad, fraternidad, desigualdad , 2007). Ahí queda eso.