Sheesh! Someone called Luistxo has invented a complicated spec–read and shiver!–with which you have to comply in order to have a proper bilingual blog.
Kaleboel has dropped its forked-tongue strategy, having discovered that people get much more excited when you are rude about them in English rather than their own obscure dialect. But that, of course, [...]

Maybe the British have had more practice than the Spanish, but while the Metropolitan Police and MI5 (”keep garden areas free from dense shrubbery“) public information campaigns are very professional, here I haven’t seen anything. Does the Spanish state really have such a low opinion of its citizens’ abilities?

Just about the only politicians who fear for the nation and for the national religion/myth and language as much as the French are the Malaysians. A couple of days back, Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Rais Yatim said that Malaysians were destroying Bahasa Melayu by using it in a rojak manner, mixing it up with [...]

This excerpt from a court statement made on 1928/1/11 is taken from Paco Villar’s Historia y Leyenda del Barrio Chino (1997):

Mel Gibson has decided to make a movie version of the legendary sacking of London by Essex Girl. He is apparently hoping to film most of it on Friday night, before the Vomit Comet heads out east once more. Tennyson sets the scene quite admirably:

This article represents one very important reason why you just don’t want to live in Manhattan, ever. An excerpt:

An investigation is underway in Mehmood Booti, Lahore into the bizarre murder of three young men at a failing prayer school:

There’s a very interesting Beeb article that suggests that the introduction of sign language increased deafness rates by enabling carriers of hearing impairment genes to get it together more easily. In particular, this comment by research leader Walter Nance opened a new window:

Lluís Foix is another of the lost old fools who wander round La Vanguardia gabbling the ultra-conservative mantras of the Franco era, but with a Catalan accent, bien entendu. Lying (sorry: publishing extraordinary errors of fact) about America has been an integral part of La Vanguardia’s corporate culture for a very long time, and Mr [...]

Metrosexual. The Americans blame French cissies and Brit hacks, but the honours go to Galician AZ Alkmaar footballer, José Fortes Rodriguez:
Some women just don’t get it. They’re not used to being turned down. They say: Go on, you want me don’t you! I say: Am I talking Chinese? I don’t find you attractive. And then [...]

I don’t think that John McWhorter’s “YO!” has really “floated to the ends of sentences and lost its shouting intonation, and … become what linguists would call a pragmatic marker.” It’s just like football: there are always a few pragmatic markers hanging around on the margins of matches, and then there are Dutch defenders who [...]

Ah, how we all laughed at mad old Arnie! Mr Schoenberg, who was born on the 13th and feared the number all his life (Twelve tones? That’ll do nicely…), of course died on the 13th, just when he thought his illness had passed. And now the epidemiologists (c/o Bristol-Myers Squibb (Taiwan) Ltd) seem to be [...]

As the barking of the mad dogs of Mechelen recedes, Hispanic PR Newswire mutters in our ear that its market is suffering from a severe case of the proverbs:

Condescending southerner David Green (he’s Manchester-based) has a piece on the Beeb listing the delights that await Rivaldo when he finally signs for Bolton Wanderers. What many people this morning find difficult to understand is why Rivaldo can’t be arsed to travel those extra 10 miles up the A666 to the Anchor Ground, home of [...]

Kaleboel is one (1) today, which means you’re going to start seeing signs of maturity on-this-day items from 2003 in the right hand column of individual posts. I started it for three reasons:

Maartje Draak (1907-1995) was a brilliant Celtologist who is remembered principally for having laid bare the debt of the courtly romance to folklore. Draak is Dutch for “dragon”, and she is said on occasion to have begun lectures with the words: “My name is Draak and I deal with fairytales.”

The Moors go ballistic

Tit is probably not a transformation of the abbreviation for the Latin ter in die, thrice a day, but the thought intrigues.

The Mexicain, advertised in La Vanguardia on April 24th 1904, is the kind of miracle cure for obesity about which one would like to know more. Was it a modern-type fat-buster, or did it simply cause chronic diarrhea?

“I am a bullfighter and a Catalan,” said Mario Cabré, “which is equivalent to being a bullfighter two times over.”

North Korea’s in an even bigger mess than normal, so its Barcelona-spawned internet liar-in-chief, Alejandro Cao de Benos, (Dutch post with pictures) may actually have to start working for his money soon. How do I know Alejandro’s a liar? Because that’s what he tells us in a comment on Free North Korea!:
When I switch on [...]

Sorry, but I just couldn’t resist this photo, which was sent to me by le Big FFF, who received it from someone else a long time ago. I think it’s probably early 70s Anglophone West Africa, but your guess is as good as mine:

Someone pointed out last night that it has hardly stopped raining since Spain elected a leader with no experience in government. This would not come as a such a surprise if people here spent slightly more time sitting in filthy attics reading smelly old newspapers (specifically, La Vanguardia dated April 16th 1929) and slightly less [...]

Thanks to Greg at Barcablog for the link. Give him a job somebody (and come on one of my walks as well, you lazy sods)!
Via Al-L, who has dumped the Osama look.

While nationalist politicians continue to exaggerate hugely the number of Catalan speakers (think: lobbying, EU official languages), the new Idescat figures (Idescat is the notoriously unreliable Catalan government stats bureau) on social use suggest that the vast sums spent by the Catalan government over the past couple of decades on persuading and forcing people to [...]

If you search Google for “Flurble gronk bloopit, bnip Frundletrune” it asks - quite fairly in my opinion - whether you meant “Fluble gronk bloopit, bnip Frundletrune“.
Let’s see what kind of ads that generates.
Via Syntactic Saccharose.

The objective of Euratom is
To ensure a regular and equitable supply of ores,
Sorry, the phone’s ringing.

There’s an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal which will raise hackles but probably reflects a fairly widely-held view at the moment. It says basically that “Generalísimo Zapatero”, hiding behind his electorate, has returned Spain to the lost years of the 40s, when the isolationism and anti-Americanism of the Franco administration ensured that Europe really [...]

Mark Liberman has a devastating post that goes way beyond the other day’s rather unconcluded up business. What I wonder, though, and briefly so, is why “to * up” ghits about so much more than “to * down“, to say nothing of that unloved beast, “to * it all around”.
Dinner is emerging from the shower, [...]

The noble Iggy notes that Korean “parents are turning to surgery to sort out misplaced l and r sounds.” Apparently

Dinner’s taking a shower, so here’s a very interesting notion from Brice Dunwoodie re the next galaxy in the Googliverse:

I once saw a pocket trumpet miraculously transformed by a car into something vaguely resembling a plate, but back in 1753 James Hanson and his father were condemned to transportation for trying to achieve the opposite without paying for the raw materials. This text is from the online proceedings of the Old Bailey:

Francesc Candel, Els altres catalans, “The other Catalans” (1964):
For some time the immigrants [to Catalonia], and specifically those from the south [of Spain], have been called “Koreans”. They are also called this in Bilbao and Avilés. It is curious that in Turin and Milan those who come from the south of Italy are also called [...]

I’ve put in something new that has got rid of virtually all my spam which, although it mostly went straight to trash, had reached 3500+ daily. As far as I know this will have no adverse effects on normal people, but give me a ring if you suddenly find you’re having problems reaching me by [...]

You’re all bright, entrepreneurial, caring people, and I always weep with happiness when you explain difficult stuff to me. So please, someone, please tell me where I can take the cheques/checks denominated in US dollars which Google kindly sends to my Barcelona address. I tried a bank here this morning and they almost called the [...]

Mr. Haughey: We might have to bring in an alien stallion. Dr. Thornley: As long as it was not a communist stallion.

Lovely line in La Vanguardia, discovered lazing on top of an article re bullfighting:

Jordi says (comments) that this La Vanguardia writer misuses his sources and has a dubious attitude towards Jews. Mr Robinson disagrees, and explains why. Meanwhile, I’m still waiting to hear news of the sacking of Rafael Ramos (search), whose sins are incontrovertible.

The big news in La Vanguardia today is crucifixion, sacrifice, and the indomitable Spanish spirit, with the merest nod to Indochina. However, there are a couple of short reports on foreign visitors that may conceivably be of interest.

Interesting coincidence: Mallorca was the home base of Franco’s Mr Fixit, Juan March, who may have been an [...]

Funny old world: just when I announce that this blog will henceforth be devoted to politics (ie money, sex, violence and food), Language Log goes and blogrolls me. Cool, cool, incredibly cool, but I know a secret agenda even when I’m on the drugs.