The Spanish, making progress with a backlog of untranslated English snowclones?

The precedents for, and some possible implications of, the Catalanisation of Barcelona’s cinemas. Plus some crowd-pleasing video of the Quebec language police in action. (Allez! Allez! Allez! And the hell with the economy!) All in somewhat fevered response to an article by Martin Dahms in the Tages-Anzeiger.

Why and how the 17th century Portuguese tropical medicine specialist, Aleixo de Abreu, tried to prevent proles from reading his cure for scurvy.

Humiliating linguistic error in PR for Arcadi Espada’s new online newspaper

Fill in the gaps in this pasquinade on the voiceless velar fricative, which I found last night in Mesonero Romanos’ El antiguo Madrid:
En la plaza hay un cartel
Que nos dice en castellano
Que José, rey italiano,
Roba a España su dosel;
Y al leer este cartel,
Dijo una maja a su majo:
–Manolo, pon ahí abajo
Que me C….. en [...]

Is Mr Barbecue Bunny’s sardonic grin pre- or post-mortem?

Its teachers are raging butterflies, says a 16th century music publishing entrepreneur.

And they’re going descriptive, bit by bit.

Do Spanish speakers get more excited about “defective” accents than English speakers?

The strange shrieks of theatrical monsters often don’t require translation.

And a quick trawl of Spanish collections of phonetic equivalents, the closest many of the natives get to learning a foreign language.

Link love for 05/06/2009.

Spanish entries from the 1811 Dictionary of the vulgar tongue, with some fanciful etymological speculation and a mercifully brief bout of bar-room anthropology.

Minsheu’s Pleasant and Delightfull Dialogues: where did he get all that horseshit?

Stallholders in Vilafranca del Penedès are slashing prices, but don’t let greed get the better of you.

Renfe’s public information system at plaza Cataluña station can’t cope with the cedilla in Maçanet.

Another nail in the coffin of the language police is creating a wave of Europhile euphoria in this household.

Barcelona’s huge subsidy to Woody Allen may attract some tourists, but the film has not achieved the politicians’ goal of promoting the notion of a separate Catalan identity.

As the evenings draw in, the Arenys de Mar sensimilla syndicate has taken time off from the plantation to post another shambling Gran Armada-wreck of nationalist historical revisionism. (It’s dated 2006, but this is the first time it’s turned up in my reader, so…) As is customary, our scenario is back-to-the-future: a massive 15th century [...]

Efforts have been made to erase a sticker of a member of the Incredible Hulk clan. Superimposed on the wooden cross of the door, what a formidable Trinity that would have been! (Anglocabrones often say the eye belongs to Providence. Whatever.)
Sometimes the Eye and the Hand are combined in one icon, as in this Hamsa [...]