/ kalebeul / 2005 / 05 / 24 / ravalejar /

Ravalejar

Skip to: comments (2); categories; related posts; previous/next post

Someone a while back invented a verb that they thought would guerrilla-brand Barcelona’s Raval district and managed to have a fake letter of protest published in La Retaguardia, Barcelona’s favourite sucker rag. Here it is in Googlish:

Nobody that it has taken a walk recently by the Raval will have been able to let notice the presence of posters, even t-shirts and other classic supports of the modern marketing research, which they raise, deliberately austere of manner, a strange word: to ravalejar in Catalan, to ravalear in Castilian. And I say of released because the design is evident that from those posters, and their content tries to send us to the manuals of spelling, the dictionaries, those containers of the linguistic knowledge that give prestige to the language.

Ravalejar is an invented, nonexistent, absurd word. A false and unnecessary word. I do not know what means: to take a walk by the Raval, to live in the Raval, to buy, to eat, to drink, to amuse themselves, to love in the Raval? Or perhaps everything simultaneously? To a false verb it is not possible to attribute to him meant. What we are suggesting to our children: that he is legitimate to create words of the anything, because if ‘? What will be the following thing: to Diagonalear, to Guineuetear, or, perhaps, to SantaColomear?

ANTONIO GUINOVART
Philologist
Barcelona

Nice try, but months into the campaign I’ve still yet to hear anyone using the word.

Trevor @ 24 May 2005 5:31 PM

Previous/next post

«« Inexorable force ««
»» Multinationals and US foreign policy »»

Comments

Anonymous
3:11 PM on 11 March 2008
no escrius massa bé en anglès.
Trevor ap Simon
3:35 PM on 11 March 2008
Looks like you don’t either, smartypants

Feeds: RSS2 · Atom

Trackback link.

Tell me if the spam dragon gives you a hard time. Log in if you want to be really foul.

Trevor on FollowTheBaldie.com goes global: He's pretty definitely Spanish. I think on this video he say...
MM on FollowTheBaldie.com goes global: I liked the comment on the Tokyo Times: 'It's Duncan Goodhew...
El Ciruco on Hypo Real State: That would be figgering you were wrong when you were actuall...
Trevor on Hypo Real State: Problems with your tags? Ask Moscow for a bailout, strings a...
El Ciruco on Hypo Real State: Last time I got into a hypo real state my A tag wouldn't par...
Trevor on Hypo Real State: More now the A tag parses correctly....

Ravalejar

Categories

Related posts

Previous/next post

Comments