Dawn

Dawn

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

I’ve mentioned that there are a fair number of innocuous adjectives in Spanish for which the feminine version means slut or tart [blog of 6.10.04]. Here’s the latest discovery – fulano. The male version merely means ‘so and so’ or ‘guy’.

And talking of words, here’s the latest bit of Spanglish I’ve seen…. Frenesí – Frenzy. There’s some irony here, as the English word has come from Latin, via French. Which leaves me wondering why frenesía doesn’t exist in Spanish.

After spending a fortune over the years on piano lessons for my two daughters – and more recently on a piano itself – I’ve now started to take lessons. I haven’t actually touched the keys yet but I do finally know that the pedals are for. The middle one is called the celeste, which means heavenly or sky blue in Spanish. This rather confused me until internet research revealed that it’s because it drops a strip of something called celeste felt between the hammers and the chords.

And finally on words, I’ve realised that the perfect substitute for individualismo is ‘solipsistic’. It sounds so much less insulting. Mainly because most of us don’t know what the hell it means.

Moving from words to whole sentences .....

Quote of the Day

All man's unhappiness comes from a single thing - that he cannot sit still in a room.
Pascal

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