Saturday, July 12, 2008

Spanish Spelling

French:Americans::English:Spaniards

In the US, we find products with French on the label to be exotic and of higher quality. Oddly enough (probably because it's also 6000 miles foreign), Spanish people feel the same way about English. Unluckily, Spaniards only have 5 vowel sounds, so to replicate English noises they have to alter the spelling (and, beyond the vowel issue, things are just pronounced differently here believe it or not). Some stuff I've seen in the past week:

Flaixbac Radio (ix=sh in Catalan)
Estriptis (Eh-Striptease for all you non-Spanish speakers)

I swear there are more examples out there, but that's all I have for now.

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