Dawn

Dawn

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Spanish obscenities; More Gib madness; and Toilet roll etiquette.

Spanish, at least in Spain, is a far more robust language than English. By which I mean that, in daily discourse, you're far more likely to hear words that (just about) still retain some taboo value in English. For example joder(fuck) and even coño(cunt), which are used by adults to children and vice versa. As with my lovely neighbour Ester and her equally lovely 17 year old daughter, María. Then there are expressions such as Me cago en . . (I shit on . .) followed by one of an endless variety of possibilities. In years past, the most shocking were possibly Me cago en la hostia/Diós(I shit on the host/God) but, in these not-so-Christian times, this is almost commonplace and unshocking. Anyway, I'm by no means an expert in Spanish swearwords and profanity so here's a Wiki page on the subject. I'll just add a couple of things. 1. This para is prompted by reading an El País article which contained several swear words (including joder) and which contrasted with an article in a British newspaper which felt constrained to write the totally innocuous 'crap' as 'c+++'. At least, I think it was 'crap'. 2. There are words in Spanish which stand in for the naughty ones, as with frig/fuck and heck/hell in English. One such is jolín, which does for joder. My problem is that, if the J is not over-stressed, this sounds like Colin. Which is why I'm regularly turning round to see who's calling me.

Last comments on this theme . . . I say 'Spanish in Spain' because I've been told by shocked South Americans that things are not the same over there. And here's something that many Spaniards don't know - The word follar(to fuck) literally means to work a pair of bellows. And to speed up grapes to make wine.

For the love of God! There's some 'devout Catholic' nut from Nerja who thinks only God can resolve the Gibraltar mess. On this he might well be right - assuming for the moment there really is an omnipotent God/Goddess - but this chap has decided to try to enlist divine help by walking to Gib carrying a 3 metre, 10 kilo cross on his shoulder. And when he gets there he's going to go on hunger strike. For 24 hours at least. Meanwhile, he hopes others will join him on his pilgrimage. Which, unsurprisingly, turns out not to be his first. Notwithstanding his efforts, God had not yet delivered the “No more hunger, no more war, peace on Earth” which has been beseeched of him. Possibly sleeping.

As for said Gibraltar spat . . . The Spanish government has turned the screw of pettiness a little further by banning exports of sand, rock and aggregates needed for construction there, which I suspect is illegal under EU rules. It's also complained that its border police are being insulted by people in the queues and having 'missiles' thrown at them. Since the queues are essentially composed of people going into Gib to work, I strongly suspect this is a Spaniard v Spaniard affair. And that the insults contain some of the words cited above. Well, if you will piss on your own doorstep.

In a further blow to Spanish aspirations, the EU has refused to consider its (probably legitimate) complaint about alleged money-laundering in Gib. Mind you, this is possibly another thing the Spanish government would want to keep under a rock. It's not as if it's unknown here. Or in next door Andorra.

Finally . . . I've recently had 5 young women to stay, all in their early to mid 30s. Not one of them, it seems, was ever taught by their parents to change a toilet roll. And that, my friends, is why the world is in the state it is today! Joder!

Which reminds me . . . I'm not sure I didn't dream this but, by pure coincidence, I saw a toilet-paper ad recently which gave a name to this failure to change the roll, leaving the empty one in the holder. Can anyone help out here?

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