It’s estimated that around three quarters of Spanish vocabulary is derived from vulgar Latin. Add on another six-ten per cent from Arabic, and you’ve still got another 15-20 per cent to play with. So where do all the other words come from? In vague historical order, mainly: Basque, Celtic, Greek, Visigoth, Catalan, Portuguese, Gallego, German, [...]
¡Con lo bonito que es la i griega! Such a distinctive-sounding letter is the ‘y’ in Spanish. Alas, it is about to get the chop and will henceforth be known as ‘ye’, as indeed it already is in much of Latin America. The reason given is that in Spanish it is mostly used as a [...]
It was one of my fellow teacher’s birthdays (er, does that mean she had more than one?) at work. She was very excited because her husband had surprised her with an i-pad. Just a teensy bit envious, I pass the news on to two other, Spanish, colleagues. “Hey guys, you’ll never guess what Tracy’s husband [...]
‘What do you call a man who looks after sheep in English?’ a fellow pilgrim asks me on the road to Santiago? ‘Er, a shepherd?’ ‘That’s right. Un chepa. In Ferrolano un chepa is a guardía municipal (local policeman). I’ll explain. Ferrol is a port in the far north of Galicia, which due to its [...]
“ ¿A cuanto están?” I ask the younger of the two women standing behind a row of upturned crates piled with higos chumbo (prickly pears). “MaMAAA,” she asks mama, even though they’ve been selling the things all morning, “¿A cuanto están?” “Tres euros la cena,” replies mother in her gardening gloves as she expertly slices [...]
