Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spanish Politics- So, we're off to the polls again in November.Well, some of us. Not me. No vote. I just pay taxes.
- One wonders which party or parties will be most castigated for this failure.
- The Dutch Zwarte Piet has nothing on us! More on this bizarre fiesta here and here.
- Details of the recent devastation in the South East.
- That Catalana grape . . . Reader María advises it's not Caiño tinto, which is a different grape of Portuguese origin. Further research found that it wasn't in Wiki's vast list of red grapes - who knew there were so many? - but I did find some more fotos, here and here. And more local ads. Red and white. I'm resigned to knowing nothing more about the grape, except - per María - that it doesn't make great wine but does make excellent aguardiente/firewater.
- Talking of Galician rural activities . . . Here's something from a happy Aussie 'camper' here in Galicia.
- A troubling article. I imagine Russia is at least as bad but you'd never get such an article published there. And you'd be pretty stupid to try to.
- I guess this had to happen but I wonder why we need to know about them? A couple are bringing up a gender-neutral child by keeping its sex a secret. They call their 17-month-old 'they' and dress 'them' in both girls’ and boys’ clothing. The pair, who are circus performers and members of the climate action group Extinction Rebellion, say that they hope the decision will enable the child to “grow into their own person”. At least they aren't calling it/they 'ze'. Truly woke.
- Welcome back, Jim. We missed your insanity. Had to make do with Ffart's.
- Word of the Day: Bellota. Porcinely important.
- Last night I acquainted a young Dutch person fluent in English that 'gay' didn't always mean what it does today, even in my lifetime. And so, for the benefit of any young reader(s) who's similarly ignorant of the transformation, here's a bit from Wiki on it. Bear in mind that the word has undergone another transmogrification and is now also used to mean something pejorative like 'awful' or 'gross':-The word gay arrived in English during the 12th century from Old French 'gai', most likely deriving ultimately from a Germanic source. Its primary meaning was "joyful", "carefree", "bright and showy", and it was very commonly used with this meaning in speech and literature. . . . It was apparently not until the 20th century that it began to be used to mean specifically "homosexual", although it had earlier acquired sexual connotations. . . The derived abstract noun 'gaiety' remains largely free of sexual connotations and has, in the past, been used in the names of places of entertainment. The word may have started to acquire associations of immorality as early as the 14th century, but had certainly acquired them by the 17th. By the late 17th century, it had acquired the specific meaning of "addicted to pleasures and dissipations", an extension of its primary meaning of "carefree" implying "uninhibited by moral constraints". A 'gay woman' was a prostitute, a 'gay man' a womanizer, and a 'gay house' a brothel. . . . The use of gay to mean "homosexual" was often an extension of its application to prostitution: a gay boy was a young man or boy serving male clients. Similarly, a 'gay cat' was a young male apprenticed to an older hobo, commonly exchanging sex and other services for protection and tutelage. The application to homosexuality was also an extension of the word's sexualized connotation of "carefree and uninhibited", which implied a willingness to disregard conventional or respectable sexual mores. Such usage, documented as early as the 1920s, was likely present before the 20th century, although it was initially more commonly used to imply heterosexually unconstrained lifestyles, as in the once-common phrase "gay Lothario", or in the title of the book and film 'The Gay Falcon', which concerns a womanizing detective whose first name is "Gay".
- Interestingly . . . Wiki again: The German equivalent for 'gay, schwul, which is etymologically derived from schwül (hot, humid), has also acquired the pejorative meaning within youth culture
- For those who didn't check, Yes all the old favourite 'Anglo Saxon' words are in the list. Apart from that, a couple of things are notable:-
- Most words are one syllable, some are two but almost none are three. Compare Spanish!
- The most numerous words begin with B, I'm guessing because of the Germanic prefix be-. As in begotten.
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