The European Space
Agency today announced they'd landed a probe on a comet travelling at
34,000 miles (or was it Km?) an hour. To me it looked like a
meringue, so there'll doubtless be a few conspiracy theories on the
net tomorrow. If not already.
In the latest of its
lists of 10 Spanish things, The Local offers the Spanish dishes you
should eat before you kick el cubo. The first of these is the vastly
overrated and ludicrously priced bits of salty rubber called
percebes. After seeing the picture, I didn't get to see the other
nine.
Here's a list from me
- Strange female names. I found them in my notebook, so apologies if
I've posted them already:-
Purificación
Anunciación
Concepción
Dolores - Pains
Lágrimas - Tears
Milagros - Miracles
Rocio - Dew
Penitencia
I may have made up one
or two. On the other hand, I may not have. There are others but they
don't come to mind right now.
Talking of The Local .
. . It reports that "A former executive with Spain's main
copyright organization has been sentenced to two and half years in
prison after he spent €40,000 on 'buying drinks' for prostitutes
using a corporate credit card". That's some going. Or coming.
Spain is rising in the
English Language Proficiency Index, from 23rd last year to 20th this
year. This puts it close to the High Proficiency category. Italy
languishes at 27th and France, of course, at 29th. At this rate,
within 20 years, Spain will have a President who speaks the world's
current lingua franca. Though not Mandarin.
Finally . . . And
talking of English . . . Last week I came across the line: And
every sweet-lipp’t thing. In a poem, of course, from earlier times.
It got me wondering whether we couldn't profit from using this
convention in similar words to 'lipped'. As in stop't, look't,
cook't, etc. Or would it just mean more apostrophe confusion?
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