The most obscene gesture in Spain is the forearm jerk, known as el corte de manga, or ’sleeve cut’. Much favoured by tantrumy footballers, this involves shooting the left arm straight up at a 90 degree angle while whacking your right palm into the elbow joint. The underlying message, which may or may not [...]
What would you do if someone gave you pumpkins? Soup them? Pie them? Put them away for Halloween? In Spain, you’d probably kick down a door and sulk. Dar calabazas a alguien, to give someone pumpkins, means to reject them, to turn them down. It used to be only hapless Don Juans who got the [...]
No-one is ever going to persuade me that a cock goes quiquiriqui or kikiriki, no matter what its nationality. After years of beratement (yes, I know this word doesn’t exist but I feel it should) from my students, however, I am prepared to admit that cock-a-doodle-doo is also pushing it a bit. Perhaps the Japanese [...]
Animals ’speak’ different languages. An English dog responds to “Sit!” a Catalan dog to “¡Seu!” and a Spanish dog to the long-winded “¡Siéntate!” Of course, what they are responding to (or not, as the case may be) is the tone, not the word. My cats don’t care what I call them as long as I [...]
Every other bloke in Andalucía is called Paco. In our village there’s a whole slew of them: Paco el panadero (Paco the bread van man), Paco del bar (Paco of the bar), Paco mechero (lighter Paco – a cheerful chap in his 50s with a mental age of seven who has a thing about lighters [...]
