Brújulas y catalejos....

Today I am going to look more closely at some new Spanish words I came across whilst reading. It's really interesting and engaging to pull words apart and see what the "bits" mean... and you are learning all the way.....

Quite early on in Isabel Allende's amazing "La Casa de los Espíritus" we come across Marcos and his strange aeronautical antics...

" Para el vuelo llevaba, adamás, su brujula, un catalejo y unos exstraños mapas de navegación ...."

So I looked up catalejos ( telescope) and brújula ( compass) and that could have been that... on with the story.

But I decided to look further into these two odd-looking words......

Catalejo = telescope...... Well, cata is a trial/testing/sample ... and lejos is " far away."
So, the word seems to mean something like " a sample of far-away" which is a rather imaginative and brilliant version of what a telescope does.

The French are rather more literal... a telescope to them is a " long-view" ( longue-vue) and to the Welsh it is a "spy-mirror" [ ysbienddrych ... ysbio = to spy and drych = mirror...quite neat really)

Let's move on to brújula ( compass) .... for a start, brujo is a magician and bruja is a witch !! And brujulear means " to find out by guesswork/conjecture. So the noble compass seems to have been regarded from the start as a magical sort of guessy thing. Neat.

Also rather strangely there seems to be a Witches Compass ( sic) in His Dark Materials. And further googling shows that a real person called Redfern ( a witch-hunter) used a "Witch Compass" to detect witches... and when he found them they went to Lancaster Gaol which is not a 5 minute walk from where I am sitting typing this. 7 steps to Kevin Bacon or what?

I've also been reading Talk Dirty Spanish by Munier and Martínez...some hair-raising stuff in there... but here are a couple of interesting pull-apartable words...

The slang word for an office worker is chupatintas.

Chupar = to suck, and tinta = ink..... so a desk-worker/clerk-type person is an " ink-sucker"... lovely eh?

Then an excellent bit of slang for a dictionary... tumbaburras.

A "burra" is a donkey, and "tumbar" is to knock over/knock down ... so a dictionary is, as they say in the book, a "donkey-dumper."!! I love that... and eminently useful and memorable.
It's also the reason for the picture at the top.

And as for some music, here's the fine Mabü with a live version of Buenos Dias ...a truly excellent song....



I can't find the words on the net as yet... but I do have the CD, and will get the words from the CD booklet in due course... as they say.
Well, true to my word, here are the words from the CD booklet..

Cada día me siento más cerca de ti
Si no fuera la fuerza no estaría aquí
Hay quien dice que el miedo no es parte de mí
Que energía y locura me abrazan

Quiero y no, olvidarme de ti
Quiero y no, dejar de sentir
Si pudiera quitarme el disfraz lo haría
Si pudieras sacarme de aquí

Buenos días, buenos noches te llama, se mete en tu cama y respira
Se acurruca en tu pecho y se duerme tranquila

Al revés, roma et yod, roma et otiuq
Al derecho y sin tanto misterio, ti guarda en mí
Ya no quiero sentir el calor de otro cuerpo
ya no quiero alejarme, elejarlo de mí

Buenos días, buenos noches te llama, se mete en tu cama y respira
Se acurruca en tu pecho y se duerme tranquila

Incidentally, I hope you notice the weird line after the first chorus...

" roma et yod, roma et otiuq"

Think about it folks... but why ??

amigos falsos.....

You've all read those tedious lists of "false friends" in the grammar books...

They are words which don't mean what you think they mean.... molestar, intentar, en absoluto and suchlike.

Here is a list of much more interesting false friends... in my opinion anyway...

parca... no, it's not a sort of anorak/hoody thing... it's FATE or DEATH.

trillar... not sweet trilly singing at all.... its the verb " TO THRASH."

avispa ... it's not talking very quietly , actually it's a WASP.

golfo .... no, not "to play golf" at all, it means a BAY, GULF or ABYSS.

germania ... doesn't mean a love of all things German... it's THIEVES' SLANG... so there.

castor ... far from being a rolly thing under chair-legs, it's really a BEAVER.


acre .... this is not a certain amount of land as you might think, it means BITTER/SOUR.

sumo .. not a big fat wrestler in Japan, but really it the HIGHEST,GREATEST,SPECIAL.

liar ... well, it isn't someone who tells fibs, but the verb TO TIE/TO BUNDLE.

baldio ... to go bald... but no! baldio in fact is a piece of WASTE LAND ( also, "IDLE")

limpio ... of course it isn't " to limp"... it's CLEAN, SMART.

zapar ... is this when you change channels with the remote... nope, it's to UNDERMINE."

caber.... that big tree-trunk thrown by kilted folk... no... it's "TO BE CONTAINED IN."

balsa... no, it's not that spindly wood to make model planes, but a POOL, LAKE or RAFT.


Well, there's plenty more you are bursting to know, but that will do for now. Loads of really really essential words there which could land you in deep trouble if you get them muddled.




Just imagine the embarrassment if you gave your friend some chair-leg rolling-along devices, when they had hoped to unwrap a fine pet beaver. You'd never live it down.

Last time we had Zahara and Beth... I forgot to mention that the song was a bit cut off at the end by the way..... and today it's Mariajose with a false-friend-entitled song, Me Equivoque........



Ray says.. " He's not worth it luv, you'd be better off with some nice steady bloke.... "

and here's the words...

Llueve y es de noche en la ciudad
Ya no puedo mas, quiero escapar
No dejo de pensarte siempre y la verdad
Sé que llego el momento de cambiar
De salir a buscarte y decirte que me equivoque
Que pedirte mas tiempo fue un error y fue una estupidez

Que no quise perderte y dejarte, solo escúchame
Se pedirte mas tiempo fue un error y fue una estupidez
Y no se estar un día sin ti
Solo tengo ganas de salir
De salir a buscarte y decirte que me equivoque
Perdóname

Duele y es difícil confesar
Se que llegó el momento lento de aceptar
De llamar y decirte “fui una tonta, amor, perdóname”
De correr a pedirte que me abraces una y otra ves

Que no quise perderte y dejarte, solo escúchame
Se pedirte mas tiempo fue un error y fue una estupidez
Y no se estar un día sin ti
Solo tengo ganas de salir
De salir a buscarte y decirte que me equivoque
Perdóname

Si solo no pudiera recordar
Las noches que sentimos sin hablar
Tal vez seria más fácil olvidar
De salir a buscarte y decirte que me equivoque
Que pedirte mas tiempo fue un error y fue una estupidez

Que no quise perderte y dejarte, solo escúchame
Se pedirte mas tiempo fue un error y fue una estupidez
Y no se estar un día sin ti
Solo tengo ganas de salir
De salir a buscarte y decirte que me equivoque
Perdóname
Perdóname

Fuente: musica.com
Letra añadida por Kandyman


Hey... I got a superb MAFALDA book today for a mere £1... 10 Años con Mafalda .... it's a sort of compilation with lots of cartoons I've not seen before.

Tierra mojada

Having just got back from a holiday in sunny (?) Fermanagh, and just out of curiosity I had a look through some of my old articles.... sonds much better than " posts" doesn't it?

Anyhow, there was one a while back which I really liked... ( well, I like them all)... and I think perhaps most readers didn't realise that it was a joke... a parody of the sort of exercises you get in textbooks.

SO... I'm going to re-publish it... but now you KNOW it's not meant to be taken seriously.

Here we go...




It's the usual thing... you've got to use this picture as a starting point for a little story.... keep it in the present tense if you like... but to help you, here is a list of useful words and phrases.... try to get most of them in..

agüero mal ..... a bad omen
aceite ..........olive oil
aparejador ...... quantity surveyor
airar ........... to get angry
acrillar a balazos ... to riddle with bullets
alardear .......... to boast
avicola ........... poultry
avios.............. gear, kit
azafata ............ air hostess
ni un ápice ....... not a whit
agredir............. to attack
aserradero........... a sawmill
aguarrás ............. turpentine
arroparse..............to wrap up warm
aplastar ................ to squash flat, to crush
apabullar................ to crush
achatar...................to flatten
altivez................... haughtiness, arrogance
caballero andante......... a knight errant
añoranza...................nostalgia
ambiente ..................atmosphere, surroundings
estar aviado .............. to be in a mess
amilanar ...................to scare
aplacarse .................to calm down
alunizar .................. to land on the moon.

I hope that all helped, and that you will send me your lovely stories. Perhaps, next time we could try some words beginning with b as a more advanced task.

There you are you see... it was all a joke really... however, if anybody want's to have a go at fitting all those words into a parrot-based story that's fine.

Obviously I'm rather sluggish after my holiday so I'm going to go straight to "music time" now.. so...

Here's a short but lovely song.... it's that Zahara again...Incidentally, what does " Chica pop" actually mean... I have drawn a blank using conventional means, so if anyone knows I would be pleased to hear about it.



here's the words for you to sing along to... it's that sort of song...

el día que quiso parar
siguió bañada en diamantes
tan sólo quería pasar
en roma sus vacaciones

ella es una chica pop
frágil como Marilyn por Warhol
se llamaba Edda Kathleen
era un cuatro de mayo
y girar
gritar!!
y tratar de olvidar que
tiene una casa sin vistas
y tratar de olvidar que
tiene una casa sin vistas

no puede evitar fumar
su piel son colores quemados
te mira y no sabe mirar
se pega como tierra mojada

ella es una chica pop
atrapada en papel fotográfico
se entretiene con mirar a través del cristal
y girar
gritar!!
y tratar de olvidar que
tiene una casa sin vistas…
y tratar de olvidar que
tiene una casa sin vistas..

Fuente: musica.com... thanks for the words.

Here's a more complete version, al fresco no less but minus Beth.... but isn't Zahara's voice just lovely! And this song suits it perfectly.....



Here's a muy genial interview with the fine Zahara... it's pretty fast stuff..



If you want to read about a stupid thing that happened while I was on holiday, copy and paste this into google... http://mostlybirdingwithray.blogspot.com/