In an officially monolingual community such as the one I live in, public communication acknowledges the existence of basically two languages – the official one and the culturally dominant one. This means that most linguistic material to be heard or read on the streets, in the media, in advertising, or even in the academic […]
Archivos de Etiquetas | English
Busca a alguien que
A los profesores nos gusta compartir ideas y sugerencias sobre actividades que “nos funcionan” en clase, como quien intercambia recetas de cocina (o médicas, ya que no solo estamos intentando alimentar, sino curar la ignorancia); de hecho, se puede decir que la nueva ciencia didáctica consiste, hasta cierto punto, en eso: en compartir recetas. […]
Words we might need someday
I need to start using old images of the blog because the Diarium site won’t allow me to upload any new ones. Probably an advancement of the times to come. Languages have different inventories of words, thus of concepts, as famously illustrated by color term lists across the world. This justifies the pervasive phenomenon of […]
This cat I’d never told you about
Demonstratives usually help us point at things we consider identifiable and, in some sense, already known by our communicative partners. In Spanish, whenever I say something like este gato ‘this cat’, it is either because the cat is present in the physical situation ‒ besides, it is implied that the cat is comparably close […]
Yet another orange
Thank Bog, O my brothers, that them oozhassny views of language as automatically determined by social ascription are now starting to be viddied as chepooka, and will end up by snuffing it. What our slovos actually do is like turn us into something we want to be. In this sense, nadsat ways of govoreeting […]
Those false facts we were taught about English
Learners of a foreign language, especially at initial and intermediate stages, are basically taught its standard variety – provided there is such a thing. It is generally assumed that if you just use ‘common’ words and constructions, avoiding dialectal features, colloquial traits and slang of any sort, you will communicate successfully in most situations. […]
The trouble with vowels
Vowels are the flesh of words and consonants are their bones. Undoubtedly, the Spanish vowel system is much simpler than its English counterpart: the standard variety and most regional and social ones have only five phonemes, namely /i, e, a, o, u/, with very little if any phonetic overlapping among them. In turn, variants […]
A decalogue of art
What is art and where can it be found? The following decalogue is intended to provide at least some bases for discussion. 1. Art is the creation of a different reality. Probably the only feature that can be considered common to all forms of art is the fact that they go beyond what […]
Gertrude Stein and the end of avantgarde
A book is in a chapter is in a page is in a sentence is in a word is in a letter, and it is nowhere near. I have only read two books by Lost-Generation diva Gertrude Stein’s books it’s only two I have read, but, as can be observed, that should be enough […]
Weekness
What is the first day of the week? Any Spaniard will unhesitatingly answer Monday. This is what our wall calendars suggest by placing this day at the left end of the metaphorical boulevard—time is itself a metaphor—of the week, and traditionally highlighting it with red ink in recognition of its sacred nature in Christian […]
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