LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

 I believe I have already mentioned the truism that society has taken great strides forward in its attitudes toward marriage and births out of wedlock. What was considered a sin and looked down upon a few generations ago may today pass without raising an eyebrow. The expression born on the wrong side of the blanket refers to someone born outside marriage. It is an old-fashioned, somewhat euphemistic way of describing what was once regarded as a social stigma. Given the changes in society's attitudes toward such births, one might assume that the expression has become obsolete. And yet, it continues to appear in literature: “I was born on the wrong side of the blanket.” Anya Seton, Winthrop Woman , 1958. “… those royal romances which always seemed to involve births on the wrong side of the blanket.”   Time magazine, February 21, 1969. “… born on the wrong side of the blanket.”  Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead , 2022. These examples might lead us to question whet...

Escucho y leo a literatos, profesores, periodistas, hombres de letras, que explican en artículos y entrevistas, que poseen en casa enormes bibliotecas con muchos, muchos libros. Es más, creo recordar que había un programa televisivo donde el reportero recorría bibliotecas privadas de famosos, cuyas estancias estaban  atiborradas de libros, colocados en estanterías, debajo de las mesas, en la cocina, en la bañera. Vi la de Amando de Miguel y Luis Alberto de Cuenca, y quizá otros cuyos nombres se han borrado de mi memoria senil. Arturo Pérez Reverte se ufana en las redes de tener 32.000 volúmenes en su casa. Recuerdo el horror de ver tantos libros desperdigados y apilados de mala manera. Un verdadero sinsentido. Aparte de la sabiduría tradicional, eso implica polvo, mucho polvo.  Saco mi ábaco y calculo: Si tengo 30.000 títulos y leo uno a la semana, sin saltarme ninguna semana, leeré 52 al año. Para leer los 30.000 libros necesitaré 577 años en números redondos. Claro que si le...

Postscript Whatever happened to Lewis Perelman, the man who predicted the demise of conventional education? He did not disappear immediately after publishing School’s Out in 1992. He continued to write and work on policy issues, and an interview published in 1997 shows him still defending his thesis.  Yet today, Perelman seems to have faded from public discussion, while the schools he declared obsolete are still standing. His predictions deserve revisiting. Perhaps that, too, is a lesson in the unpredictability of the future. Perhaps Dr. Perelman's mistake was not to predict that school would disappear, but to underestimate its capacity to survive. Or perhaps the real revolution is still to come. Dr. Lewis Joel Perelman, born in 1946, passed away on March 10, 2026. 

Has the internet and technology truly changed traditional classroom education? Are students learning more, and learning better? In 2002, while preparing the fourth volume of my English in Action , an English grammar for Spanish speakers ( hispanohablantes ), I wanted to make it a chrestomathy of educated English: a selection of passages designed to help learners master a language. I included poetry, short stories, newspaper articles, and literary essays. During my research, I came across a review in the Financial Times titled “Is Education Outdated?” It discussed Lewis Perelman's School's Out: Hyperlearning, The New Technology, and the End of Education , published by William Morrow in 1992. I found the review sufficiently persuasive to obtain permission to reprint it. According to the reviewer, Perelman argued that conventional education was obsolete and that investing in school reform was like investing in the horse and buggy at the dawn of the twentieth century while ignorin...

  Juan Antonio de Zunzunegui: notario imprescindible de la España franquista Sobre la novelística de Juan Antonio de Zunzunegui (1901-1982) escribí mi tesis doctoral en los años 1963-64 , bajo la dirección de Joaquín de Entrambasaguas . Obtuve la calificación de sobresaliente , pero, más allá del valor académico, aquella investigación me abrió una ventana privilegiada a la España de la posguerra y la larga dictadura, a la que Zunzunegui sobrevivió. Quien quiera entender la atmósfera social, moral y política del régimen de Franco debe leer a Zunzunegui. Sus novelas -a veces ásperas, otras llenas de ternura, siempre veraces- registran lo que la historia oficial callaba. Zunzunegui observó y reprodujo con precisión las miserias y grandezas de la vida cotidiana y supo dar voz a una España que sobrevivía entre las sombras. Muchos ahora hablan del franquismo sin haberlo vivido; Zunzunegui lo noveló casi como notario.  Algún día escribiré aquí sobre nuestras pequeñas tertulias, en...

Some people on social media insist on challenging readers bilinguistically, telling them that certain words in Spanish or English do not exist in the other language. One such word is "apetecer" which dictionaries translate as feel like, craving, or even how about.  ¿Te apetece una pizza esta noche? / Lo siento pero no me apetece dar un paseo largo hoy. / ¿Seguro que te apetece? Segurísimo. Would that mean that the exact feeling or idea does not exist in the other language? Certainly not. The richness of our two languages is out there to be explored and studied. If we make the effort. The words may differ; the human experience does not. In English, we can translate the above three Spanish sentences: Ar e you up for a  for pizza tonight?  / Sorry, I am not up for a long walk today.    /  Are you sure you are up for it? Absolutely.   In a nutshell:  Be up for something = Apetecer and, of course, feel like and how about. 

The cruelty of human nature is well known. The cruelty directed at people with physical disabilities has a long and ugly history. Today, we congratulate ourselves on showing a certain degree of humanity in the way we refer to someone who limps or is missing a leg. Spanish has a particularly rich, and sometimes brutal, repertoire of colloquial expressions for such people. The following are examples: Patapalo Patachula Cojo Cojitranca Pataescombro Cojo de mierda Patituerto Patamula Today, euphemisms and more respectful expressions are increasingly the norm: persona con discapacidad motriz, persona con movilidad reducida, persona con cojera . We are now expected to say that David tiene movilidad reducida rather than call David a patachula or a cojitranca . Language changes, and so do our ideas of what is acceptable. Whether this change reflects greater humanity, greater sensitivity, or simply a different set of social conventions is another question.