The mozarabic language

I am going to explain who were the mozarabics and what was their language. About a milenium there were in Iberian Peninsula, Spain doesn't exist until 1492 with the total expulsion of the arabs for Catholic Kings,  several romances languages, in other words, languages which come from vulgar latin, such as Galician, Catalan, Castilian, etcetera and another one was the Mozarabic. The Mozarabics was Christians people keeping their romance language developed themselves in occupied zone by Arabs. They were usually persecuted and forced to pay taxes to practise their religion. Most of them were fleeing to north where they adopted  romances languages existing over there. Therefore and finally, the language Mozarabic disappeared. I post a known poem.

¡Tanto amare, tanto amare   

Habib, tanto amare!      

Enfermaron olios nidios, 

E dolen tanto male 

Translating:

So much love, so much love

there is so much love that

my bright eyes got ill(due to so much crying)

and they hurt so bad.( Anonymous, XI Century )

Astucia

Cuando encuentro una nueva palabra en español, me gusta ver cómo se usa la palabra en otras situaciones. Algunos diccionarios proveen ejemplos de uso, pero me parecen frecuentemente insatisfactorios e* irreales . Debido a esto, he descubierto recientemente una técnica que me sirve bien. Concretamente, voy a Google Búsqueda avanzada, consigno la palabra de interés, elijo el idioma y, el más importante, la última actualización. Fijar la última actualización a "en el último mes" suele eliminar los resultos de diccionarios en linea, etc. Generalmente, esta técnica me da buenos ejemplos del uso de la palabra.

Por ejemplo, el otro día me llamó la atención la palabra inglesa "astute" y me pregunté cuál era su equivalente en español. Aprendí rápidamente que era "astuto", pero todavía quería saber si tenía el mismo sentido de la palabra inglesa. Usé la dicha técnica para "astuta" y encontré un artículo noticiero titulado "Astuta mujer tima a 2 víctimas...". Bueno, de inmediato ví que "astuto/a" puede tener un sentido distinto de los de "astute", porque no esperaría ver "astute" en tal contexto. La palabra inglesa siempre es positivo, expresando una virtud, no un vicio. A lo mejor usaríamos "cunning" o quizá "shrewd" para una persona que engaña a sus víctimas.

Otro beneficio de la técnica en este caso era que aprendí el verbo "timar", que no he encontrado antes.


*Look! I remembered to use "e"! Quite an accomplishment!

Introducing myself

Dear all,

I am very pleased to join you on the blog. Audrey and Matthew added me to the list. I was really afraid not to be able to follow the steps to sign up and write here. I am hopeless at technology. In fact,

I've been able to find the title but not the "label" section.

I hope to contribute with posts in Spanish and English and do my best to help people here. I live in Almeria (Spain). I am 46. I studied Philology in Granada a long time ago.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Best regards,
Antonio Berbel

Fey

Anoche, mientras leía un libro a mis hijos, me econtré con un adjetivo que nunca he visto antes — "fey". ¿Cómo no podría haber encontrado una palabra tan corta en mis 50 años de hablar y leer inglés? Podría entenderlo si fuera una palabra técnica o de origen extranjero, pero no es el caso. "Fey" quiere decir "de otro mundo, especialmente en un sentido espiritual". "Other-worldly" fue el mejor sinónomo que vi en el diccionario. No es que te importa conocer esta palabra, pero creí que te podría gustar saber que incluso un angloparlante de cinco décadas como yo no conoce todas la palabras del idioma.

P.D. Tal vez hayas escuchado hablar de la cómica estadounidense Tina Fey. Me pregunto si sabe que su apellido tiene este significado.

Online shopping

It is fact that the Internet has supposed an important advance on communications. The majority of the companies have developed an online-shop in order to promote and sell their goods but, do you really think that these new commercial techniques encourage consumerism among Internet users? 

In my opinion, the best advantage of buying online is that these kind of businesses are opened 24/7. One can do the shopping being comfortably sat in their favourite armchair without having to queue neither in the supermarket nor in the mall and, as a consequence, people  save time and take advantage of their free time. In addition to this, online buyers do not have to take the car to go shopping and, as a result, an additional saving in petrol is got. As far as I am concerned, I believe that another advantage is that people have an enormous amount of shops to choose and compare from, this is very important because sometimes bargains are waiting for you by clicking your mouse.

Not only is buying online good for customers, but also it is dangerous for them. There are people who have been scammed because they bought in fake websites in which the only goal was to get their money without sending them the goods they were supposed to have bought. Other problems can arise because of phishing. On many occasions, their identities are stolen, and the thieves might get them into troubles with the authorities.

All in all, I strongly believe that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. The only thing is that when people buy online must be sure that the website they are buying from is sure. This is better said than done, but these days safety is very important for the majority of companies in order to gain confidence among the possible customers and make them buy. I am almost sure that in most cases we can trust them and carry out our shopping without any kind of risk, which is their main goal.

Where are the businesses?

Last week a platoon of fiscal agents from the state treasury department visited my city’s downtown. They were auditing compliance with the state sales tax. And what happened?

I think they lost their time because almost all businesses in the downtown have closed in recent years. In the future, these fiscal agents will have a hard time justifying their salaries. Hahaha!

Planet Fitness

After launching an aggressive marketing campaign, a Planet Fitness gym opened in my city. Planet Fitness is a 24-hour fitness club with hundreds of locations throughout the United States. This franchise offers a modern place to work out without the hostile environment of other gyms; whatever that means.

During January, more than one thousand of locals enrolled in the new gym, including men sporting beer bellies, middle-aged housewives, and unathletic twentysomethings. None of them look like they have lifted a five-pound dumbbell in their lives. How many will survive February?

I visited my city’s Planet Fitness during its opening week. The floors and bathrooms were immaculately clean, and the working out area was full of state-of-the-art weight machines and dozens of treadmills. However, I decided not to subscribe. During January, they had a tempting introductory offer of $0 enrollment fee and $10 per month, but you must sign a 12-month contract and consent to automatic bank payments. These contracts scare me.

When I decide to enroll in a gym, I will stick to an old-school gym. Nothing can replace the atmosphere of an old gym with its rusty machines, loud grunts, and hardcore fitness users.