A is for Awesome
From Awesome to Zeitgeist, you’ll be blown away by this no-brainer A to Z of buzzwords, hype and cool stuff. A is for Awesome Please don’t send me any more emails that say: “Hi there [user name] I just want you to know you are AWESOME, and to thank you for your AWESOMENESS I’m giving […]
Jumbo
So we were talking in Catalan about something very large, and my son said: “in English you can use jumbo, right? Like a jumbo-sized sandwich or burger or other horrid pile of chemicals masquerading as food. Jumbo screen. Jumbo pack. Jumbo prawn.” “Jumbo jet!” I yelled. How on earth could I have missed that one […]
Flipchart
I needed a flipchart (back in the dark days before I had a smartphone). And I could not for the life of me remember how to say it in Spanish or Catalan. Actually, I don’t think I ever knew. The dictionary turned up ‘rotafolio’ which I’d never heard before, and nor had the people in […]
Snoreathon
The first time I came across the word ‘snoreathon’, I fell about laughing. It’s so amusing and evocative. How was the match / the movie / your date? A total snoreathon. You glue a bit of ancient Greek place name to an onomatopoeic middle English verb and you got it: mind-deadening please-make-it-stop tedium beyond endurance. […]
Not Schrödinger’s Cat
An article of mine about the Catalan language once appeared in a magazine under the title ‘Catalan Got Your Tongue? The Language With Nine Lives.’ I showed it to my Spanish friend M-J. She was bemused. “In Spanish,” she said solemnly, “a cat has seven lives. Why nine?” “Porque sí.” Because yes, which has always […]
Using Your Loaf
When I was growing up in the north of England, at bedtime my mum always used to say: come on now, up the apples. In those days, men still wore titfers. When people asked questions my dad thought were stupid, he’d say: use your loaf. What I most love about rhyming slang is that you […]
Think-tank
Don’t you just love this word? I do. It’s one my totally favourite expressions, one of those matches made in heaven where two words that rhyme or alliterate or have assonance come together effortlessly to make one snappy, humorous, graphic expression. The dictionary says that a think-tank is a research institute. But I see this […]
Pop Until You Drop
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It was 1995, and I’d just started my new job writing SpeakUp Movies: booklets designed to make original-version commercial movies comprehensible to Spanish-speaking students of English. A large part of the work involved writing an English-Spanish glossary to the screenplay. This glossary was to include notes on anything that we thought needed explanation or clarification: […]
In progress: In The Garlic new edition
We’re working on it. Stay tuned.
With A Rose Between Her Teeth
A story that plays with both British and Spanish stereotypes. “Whenever we Costa Brits became weary of sun, sea and sangria, tired of bright beach umbrellas, blue skies, palm trees, bead curtains, and dinner at midnight, we would go over to Debbie and David’s. Debbie’s chintzy little villa with its garden gnomes, crocheted toilet seat […]