Cool For Cats

The newspaper "dBalears" is to give away a dictionary with its edition this coming Sunday. It will be a pocket Catalan-English dictionary. Useful, you might think, and you would probably be right. Though announced in the paper's English-speaking sister organ, "Majorca Daily Bulletin", I wonder how many of the Bulletin's readership will next week be strolling to the local tabacos and adding "dBalears" to their shop for "The News of the World" and a packet of 20. I wonder how many of its readership even know of the existence of "dBalears", let alone have ever looked at a copy. Of course, only a few might have - it's in Catalan. There again, how many might have ever bought a copy of the Spanish paper from the same publishing group - "Ultima Hora"?

I already have a Catalan-English dictionary. It is the Oxford version. It proudly says on its cover - "nova edició", "per a estudiants d'anglès". I am reassured that I have the new edition, the only problem is I am not a student of English. I suspect the freebie with the newspaper will take a similar angle. Though it has its English-to-Catalan half of the book, my dictionary comes at the subject from the Catalan direction. Accordingly, in, for example, the section on prepositions, the exercise gives "the cat is under the table" (in English) with an appropriate cartoon. Not much use to those of us who need to regularly express this in Catalan. (Oh, and if you're wondering - "el gat és sota la taula" - at least that's how I'd say it.)

However, I am probably quibbling, this is, after all, a dictionary primarily aimed at Catalan speakers learning English who will undoubtedly need to know that, when "amb una familia anglesa" (with an English family), "sorry, I don't like mushrooms" is a common, everyday expression. My dictionary also seems to be more aimed at a youthful Catalan speaker. In the bit for "amb els amics anglesos" (with English friends, and note that they are English as opposed to British), there are words like "wicked". No room for "mingin', innit", but the dictionary doesn't quite convey the sort of generational context of such words. So, the next time those of you back in the UK, sorry England, are meeting with an ancient Catalan, do not be surprised if your mushrooms are in fact wicked or that your new best friend knows of a "really hip bar" which, because he's from Spain, will turn out to be the scruffiest pub in the neighbourhood.

In the spirit of "yoof" Catalan to English, the dictionary could make more of one of its "falsos amics", or false friends to give it the English term beloved of language teachers. One such is "llarg", which reads like it might be a character from a sort of Welsh Lord Of The Rings but is in fact the Catalan for long. It is of course close to the English "large". So the cool Catalan club-goer might believe that "to large it" is to long it, though this might be quite acceptable as I defy anyone to explain what "to large it" actually means.

But the main failings of my dictionary lie with the lack of the sort of everyday usage that would truly be useful to the Catalan, such as "I'd prefer to pay black" or "the indicator, what's that?". So I shall duly look to swell the coffers of Grup Serra next Sunday, and see if they have included such necessities. And perhaps some fellow Brits will do likewise, and having become the proud owners of their new dictionary, will use the newspaper for the cat to sit on (yes, that's sit on) under the table, or to wrap up the mushroom peelings. Wicked.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Jimmy Cliff (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkMzuXlKQv8). Today's title - no clues needed.

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