Liz tagged me with an eight random things about you meme, and since you are probably more interested in the Spanish language than in David, that’s what I’ll focus on.

So here you go. Five* random things that you might not have known about Spanish or related to Spanish in some way.

*You might have noticed that I’m not to good at following directions, so I gave you five things instead of eight. Here’s the rules of the meme:

Share eight random facts about yourself, pick eight bloggers to keep the meme going, tell the eight bloggers that you tagged them, and of course include these rules in your post.

Since I broke the first rule, I’ll break the second and only tag 5 others. So… Osman, Zach, MissProfe, Aaron and Simon, you’re it.

You may or may not find this +-3 minute language sketch amusing. What I find alternately funny and scary is the fact that the guy on the right really reminds me of one of my linguistics professors, both in his speech and gestures. It’s entertaining to see some Chomskyan (is that spelled right?) ideas used in this context.

Now, do you agree with him or disagree?

On Friday the Real Academa Española (RAE) announced plans to start a campaign to combine Spanish, Portuguese and Catalán, creating an Iberian lingua franca. Galician and Basque, spoken in northwestern Spain were not included. Prominent linguists and official representatives from Brazil, Portugal and the Catalonian province of Spain have been in discussions for over a year now concerning the merger, which is hoped will give Spain and Portugal a new advantage in the economy of the European Union and will give Brazil Stronger trade ties to the EU.

The proposed merger of languages is not without controversy. Some linguists argue that languages should not be controlled by a few decision-makers, but should evolve naturally, based on common usage. The economists and linguists promoting this merger counter that the cultural, economical and communicative benefits of this linguistic union greatly outweigh the negative effects of their prescriptivism. Others claim this move will alienate the three countries from other Spanish speaking countries, mainly in South and Central America.
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Brylyn from Consumerist reports “Saw this while shopping for ceiling lights in Home Depot.” Apparently someone confused Lorem ipsum with Spanish. Lorem ipsum, or Lipsum is common filler text for printers and graphic artists that has been used for hundreds of years while making mock-ups and creating designs. Any graphic artist, even if they didn’t know a word of Spanish should have been able to catch that.

If you get over the Lorem ipsum blunder and look at the text below it, you’ll notice that, while those are all Spanish words, the sentence is not all that understandable either. I think we need a new translator.

Not the most actiony of all films, but it’s a hilarious attempt (depending on how you see it) made for a Spanish class by three students- Andrés, Elliot and Arturo- who don’t use a word of English. Congrats! The only problem is they use the wrong online Spanish dictionary. Nice Fanta shirt Elliot.