Monday, March 27, 2006

El Spanglish


I´d thought that the Spanish have a perfectly good word for the little dump trucks that ferry building materials, furniture and occasionally shopping up the steep streets here. El vertedor seems appropriate, unless it means the guy doing the dumping. Perhaps Spain´s equivalent of the Academie Francaise has something to say on the subject. When I looked it up in the dictionary I found dúmper! Casareños say something like dúpe.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not sure if there is an official language police for Spain but take a look at this: http://www.abra.es/nw/index.php?enlace=comisaria.htm

Keef said...

Oh, at last, a Spanish blog in English! We are planning to move to Spain in a year or two, so we're gonna be watching you! Bwuhahaha.

Grumpy Goat said...

Is there really an 'Academie espagnol' (or whatever)? I am relieved that there's no English language equivalent; this is what makes English a language so tolerant of alternate/alternative spellings and usage.

This despite Mr Gates and his attempts to convert us all to that ficticious entity Microsoft(TM) English.

Passionate Dilettante said...

When we visited Barcelona last year, I was a bit puzzled by all the plates on banks for 'bomberos'. Transparency in the international money laundering biz? Eventually I looked it up in a dictionary - aaaahhhh! - firemen - not ETA or Al Qaeda. Vague memories of 'pompiers' from school French.

Interesting blog, by the way. The corruption scandal is reported on TVE, but having to check the dictionary for every interesting noun in the captions is a beeet of a problem!