Spaglishtalian

My friend and "Jefe de Publicidad" for Esquire Magazine Spain, Cristiano Badoch and I have discovered “Spanglishtalian”. It is essentially, the fusion between Spanish, English and Italian. Cristiano is Italian but his mother was partially raised in Venezuela. This compiled with a few years in the UK and current residence in Spain, Cristiano manages English, Spanish and of course Italian.

And so our conversations start in Spanish (we make a conscious effort) regress to English and then ultimately Italian. Keeping in mind that my Italian is limited to one semester in University, you can see where this is going! We try to stick to one language, notably Spanish, but any personal questions from Cristiano and I revert to my comfort zone of English. He starts in Spanish, hears my reply in English and unconsciously switches to English too. And of course any personal or envelope pushing questions from me and he reverts to Italian. Hola Guapo! Dove Siete? Still looking for Bob Dylan? 

JAM FLASHCARDS

Why should people care?

I have blogged about my friend Krsna before.

She was recently promoted to Planning Supervisor at CNN International and is in this week’s edition of PR Week.

I wanted to take note of her being in PR Week not just because I’m really proud of her but because I usually hold a rather pessimistic view of the news reporting industry. I think a lot of news organisations focus too much on shocking their viewers and not caring about what the viewers really want to see. But I think her first paragraph is key, and what any journalist / producer should ask – Why should people care? I think that “they” have a duty to report responsibly. Not only is content important but they way they report it. They impact the way people think, feel and do at any given moment.

I take faith in having people like Krsna filtering our daily news. Think twice before you offer her a story!

JAM English Flashcards: Fruit and Vegetables available online at jam.shop now!

Chinglish

We have started our around-the-world journey to live in Brazil… first stop: Hong Kong. A melting pot of people with differing languages, cultures, colours and religion - sandwiched into tiny apartments, busy restaurants, glass covered offices - means that effective communication is very important. Cantonese, Mandarin and English are the most abundant of the dozens of languages and dialects spoken here.

English…or Chinglish… is one of my favourite past times here. As you walk around this city you can’t miss advertising hoardings, signs, notices and shop names that can make you laugh outright or are completely inappropriate or just plain wrong! I’ll collect some examples to post here by the end of our stay in Hong Kong. Check out some other examples here.

JAM English Flashcards: Fruit and Vegetables available online at jam.shop now!