mnemonics

Translating an article on Brazilian beaches, I’ve just learned a new word in Spanish:

carioca.
1. adj. Natural de Río de Janeiro. U. t. c. s.
2. adj. Perteneciente o relativo a esta ciudad del Brasil o a su provincia.

(definition from the Diccionario de la Lengua Española.)

I suppose it’s my lousy accent than makes me connect it to karaoke. It does mean, though, that I should find it relatively easy to remember carioca by picturing the Rio carnival procession all singing karaoke as they dance the samba.

Actually, that’s such a dreadful image that I hope I don’t have much call to talk about the people and activities of Rio in Spanish.

a number of questions

Or, perhaps, a question of numbers.

A headline in today’s El Mundo says that 4,158 million euros has been lost in the last ten years due to political corruption. Except, it being Spanish, it doesn’t say it quite like that:

The Spanish use “million” in the plural after a number, giving phrases like seis millones rather than “six million”. They also use a full stop as the thousands separator and a comma where we use a decimal point.

it rings a bell

This headline has caught my attention:

...with bells on

Whether it was in any way connected with Global Handwashing Day, which fell a few days ago, I don’t know.

It was of course the use of the verb “ring” that caught my eye. I’m pretty sure that even in American English that should be “wring”.

Actually, there was far more to set me thinking in the article, which started off:

advice from Catalonia

A photo just sent to me from Barcelona:

In case you can’t guess, it says: “Switch off the telly and read a poem.” Which sounds like a good idea to me.

tall, taller, tallest

The tallest mechanic?

The rains have come, so we must get the windscreen wipers fixed on the car. That will probably entail a trip to the mechanic’s workshop – a trip to the taller mecánico.

Personally, I’ve always wondered who the shorter mechanic was, but perhaps you have to be over a certain height in Spain to be admitted into the secrets of the internal combustion engine.

Looking more closely at the photo, I see that this is not the competitive situation I had imagined at first: it’s not the taller mechanic and the even taller mechanic, just the same mecánico aiming his advertising at different levels. Perhaps he hopes that when Sultan Kosen does get a car that he can drive comfortably, he will take it to this workshop for repairs.