Wednesday, April 21, 2010

El Roto Thinks the Same as Me?

I don't see any good coming from Spain's Historical Memory Law, the one that literally looks for the buried bodies from the past. A lot of nasty shit went down during the civil war - on both sides. Now that PSOE is in power, they are looking for all the nasty stuff that Franco did. As soon as PP gets back in there, will they start looking for the nasty stuff the communists did on behalf of the Republic?

If I am reading El Roto correctly, and that usually is not an easy task, it seems he also doesn't think the wounds from the war last through the generations.

Maybe it's time to, if not forgive or forget, time to move on and solve some present problems?

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Really? They Still Don't Ask a Native Speaker?


It seems like such a simple thing to do. Let's say I'm a Spanish advertising executive and I have a great idea building on Obama's famous campaign slogan, "Yes We Can", and oh yeah, I really don't speak English - I just think I do. Why wouldn't I run my idea past a couple of native speakers? In fact, why aren't there native speakers on staff of my advertising firm if I am selling English language ads?

We all know that this used to happen all the time in Spain, the English on commercials, bill boards, t-shirts, etc. just isn't quite right, but in 2010, on a big ad campaign, this still happens?

What's funny about this story is the supposed English language expert from the Complutense University tries to correct the awkward "Yes We Want!" slogan and she still gets it wrong...

They could have found any American student on the street or Brit in a pub, to tell them that the correct response to, "We want to learn another language!" is... "YES WE DO!"