Tuesday, October 26, 2010

How to ban Spanish?

According to the Onion's National News Highlights:
AUSTIN, TX —After Texas Board of Education members were told many Spanish words come from the Muslim conquest of Spain, they finally gained the support they needed to ban the language forever.
Seriously, can't you imagine people making the argument?

I don't see it on their website, but maybe it's been pulled for newer stories, like:
"My Opponent Knows Where Washington Is On A Map; I Don't, And I Never Will" by Ron Johnson.

9 comments:

Harry Campbell said...

Off topic of course, but what's with the weird spelling "Gallician" on that book cover? Never seen it with two Ls before.

Mr. Verb said...

Don't know. Gallego is an alternate for Galego, I think ... maybe archaic or something? Somebody will have an answer for us, I bet.

Harry Campbell said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Harry Campbell said...

Galego is the Galician word, gallego in Spanish. Anything with -ll- makes me think of Gaul rather than Galicia, and is unknown to both British and American dictionaries. The title is quoted with the correct spelling in various online reviews and catalogues, and indeed on the index page, so I suppose it must be no more than a mistake by the graphic designer or whoever was responsible(!) for the cover artwork. It's happened to me more than once that crass spelling mistakes have been introduced into the cover text of stuff I've written, so perhaps it's not uncommon. But it's pretty embarrassing.

Harry Campbell said...

(Sorry for the inept double posting)

Mr. Verb said...

No problem on the double comment of course. A mistake on the book cover is pretty painful. I do think I've seen Gallego in English, but maybe I'm thinking of just the river name or something. (The river is with 'll', right?)

Harry Campbell said...

Gallego would be OK in English if you were quoting placenames in Spanish, as many do now, but not Gallician which is neither English nor anything else that I can see. There's a River Gallegos in Argentina and a River Gállego in the Pyrenees (apparently), but I don't know if the latter has any connection with Galicia.

Anonymous said...

al cohol = alcohol

which what a person might turn to when faced by the stupidity of this article. We have loanwords from Arabic, too, duh.

Mr. Verb said...

Hmmmm, you're right: The Onion's humor is usually so sharp that I'm surprised they didn't pepper it with Arabic loanwords.