High Sierra Topix

freestone wrote: ↑Thu Mar 07, 2019 7:19 am And finally, if we use a Spanish word in the English language, does it still need to follow the Spanish language rules?

When you talk about a llama, do you say "lama" or "yama"?

One of the funniest conversations I've heard was at the Rome airport. An America tourist was ordering from a Panini stand, He kept ordering one Panini. The Roman behind the counter kept asking him how many:

I want a panini with cheese.

OK. How many?

One, I want one panini with cheese.

OK. How many?

One. One panini.

And on and on. For those of you who don't speak Italian, Panino is the singular form. Panini means what we in English might call Paninos...plural. Only we usually say paninis.

They finally got it right, but not after amusing a bunch of us in line...
So we order one Panini and three Pizzas. No logic to it all. We use the plural in one case, and anglicize the singular in the other. (Plural in Italian would be Pizze)

But I live in California. Our capital is Sacramento, and our largest cities are Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Jose. Out houses have patios and we drink margaritas with our tacos and salsa. And the mountain range is the Sierra Nevada. Ay chihuahua!

balzaccom wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2019 10:03 pm Because it's the Wind River Range. The Rocky Mountain Range. The Cascade Range. But the Sierra Nevada literally means the Snowy Range. If you wanted to call it the Snowies, OK with me. But Sierra means Range. We don't say the Wind Ranges, or the Rocky Ranges, or the Cascade Ranges.

Admittedly, this is a geeky discussion. But given the percentage of our population that speaks Spanish, it shouldn't be a stretch to get the language right on this one.

An acquaintance in New Mexico tells me she cringes every time she hears "Rio Grande River". Same basic deal.

yeah, well. there is a neighborhood in Napa called Alta Heights. Alta means heights.

My favorite of all time is the location in Britain called Benbury Hill. Those are three different words for hill, each from a language once spoken in the area. Ben Bury, and Hill. What fun!

People who speak Spanish as a first language regularly molest the English language. Why would it be any different the other way around? Especially when going from a Romantic language to a Germanic language and vice versa (or is it vise versas). Years ago, I was helping our janitor learn English. I got a glimpse of his notebook and one entry read:

como se llama - wasyaname

We who speak English as our native language often (regularly) botch Spanish words. I'm not normally inclined to correct anyone who says Sierras or Sierra Nevadas.

In Boulder, we have a street named Table Mesa.

I've always liked "The La Brea Tar pits." La Brea = the tar.

In the Bay Area we also have Albany Hill, which is in Albany. It's not in El Cerrito, which is named for the little hill...

After all this, I think I now prefer The Range of Light, maybe even call it The Light, and visit the area with my Lamma.

franklin411 wrote:

We Americans have erred too far on the side of preservation, even at the cost of human life.

If wild animals worldwide had voices, I think they would say that there are one heck of a lot of human lives around.