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 ??