A bit of a flap

We often use to flap in the sense of to wave our arms around, something the Spanish are generally supposed to do more often than English-speakers.  So it comes as a surprise to learn that although there is a translation – there is always a translation – it is the not entirely satisfactory one of agitar, which as well as translating to flap also means to wave and to shake.

Aletear or batir will do for the flapping of wings, depending on the speed and the energy of the creature doing the flapping, since aletear also means to flutter while the principal translation of batir is to beat.  It’s easy to spot the ala - wing connection in aleta, which is also the wing of the (human) nose as well as the fin of a fish and the flipper of a diver or a dolphin, both of them designed to flap. 

 

Ondear is another way to describe the flapping that involves a flag waved in a patriotic hand or flown at the top of a flagpole.

To be in a flap is less graphic in Spanish, starting with estar agobiado when you’re in a flap because you’re overwhelmed with work or by events.  You can also use estar nervioso which is adequate but devoid of the English term’s headless chicken nuances.  However, there is one occasion when a flap is still un flap and that is when it part of an aircraft’s wing.

The flap on an envelope is una solapa although it also means the revere or lapel on a coat or jacket.  Should you have a cat-flap (not a good idea in rural areas where it will be used not only by small dogs but occasionally by assorted and not always reassuring wildlife) this is known as una gatera. 

In rural areas, a door can be safer than a cat-flap

Tapa is given by some sources as a suitable translation for flap when it is a leaf on a table, but this is better translated as just that: una hoja.

For those who go camping, a tent flap is un faldón although before Babygros this was also a vital element in that formerly indispensable collection of infant wear - a baby’s layette or ajuar - and which resembled a wraparound maxi-skirt on a very small scale.

Rain, rain, go away…

With more than enough rain to go round in ever-rainy Britain, when the sky darkens and the heavens open, children chant         

Rain, rain, go away,

Come again another day

Rain, rain, go to Spain,

Never show your face again

According to some sources the rhyme originated in Elizabethan times when a stroke of meteorological luck in the shape of a storm – tormenta scattered the Spanish Armada and dashed Philip II’s hopes of invasion.

 Since Spain is blessed - or cursed – with rainfall – precipitaciones that range from drizzle – llovizna to a downpour – un aguacero, not forgetting the frequent likelihood of a monsoon-calibre cloudburst – tromba de agua, children here make a very different request:

                        Que llueva, que llueva,

                        La Virgen de la Cueva

                        Los pajarillos cantan

                        Las nubes se levantan

                        ¡Que sí! ¡Que no!

                        ¡Que caiga un chaparrón

                        Con azúcar y turrón!

Not only is this rhyme longer and more engaging but religion, in the shape of Our Lady of the Cave (patron of potholers, incidentally) enters the picture too. 

Furthermore, there are little birds that sing and clouds that clear and despite the indecision of the Yes! and the No! the purpose of the rhyme is to ask for un chaparrón, another version of a downpour, and ends on a literally sweet note with sugar and turrón. 

Dictionaries insist on translating turrón - made from almonds, honey, sugar and egg-whites - as nougat, although the Spanish varieties thankfully bear little resemblance to the chewy plastic nougat that post-war English speakers grew up with.

A Spanish proverb maintains that nunca llueve a gusto de todos – it never rains to everyone’s liking or, in other words, you can’t please all the people all the time.  This is irrefutably true of rain – lluvia in Spain which, despite Professor Higgins, does not fall mainly in the plain.  On the contrary it falls wherever it pleases, usually in the Spring and Autumn when it can be depended on to devastate crops and cause maximum annoyance to off-season tourists. 



The Algar river in Altea after too much rain

Nevertheless, except in the north of Spain where Galicia, Asturias and the Basque Region often have more rain than they want, the southern sectors of Spain would prefer to have rain and be unhappy than to have no rain at all and be unhappier still.  And what could be more descriptive of the unpredictability and fleeting incidence of rain in Spain than the use of temporal to mean a storm?

Masses to tell you

 

It doesn’t often happen in Spanish that you find the same word with two totally dissimilar meanings but turba is one of them. It means peat (as in bog) or the horde or a mob of people on the brink of rioting or rampaging that is the opposite of a mass that goes calmly about its business.

The masses referred to by sociologists and dictators are las masas but both a mass or masses of people is una multitud or, more colloquially, a mountainous-sounding but still singular montón de gente. 

Apart from that, masses of anything become muchos or, in the presence of outright abundance muchísimo (which remains singular, though): muchos libros – masses of books or muchísima comida – masses of food.  You can continue to aim high with montones de libros, montones de quejas or montones de comida. 

The English en masse (which in any case is French) is en masa but mass culture is cultura de masas and a mass meeting is una concentración. 

Mass media is los medios de comunicación although the adjective mass can be translated not only as masivo: apoyo masivo – massive support but also colectivo: histeria colectiva – mass hysteria.

To mass-produce is fabricar or producir en serie but to mass in the sense of to meet, gather together is concentrarse. 

An English amass is a Spanish amasar: amasó una gran fortuna – he amassed a great fortune but amasar also means to knead, the action of appreciative cats as they knead their paws and cooks who, appreciative or otherwise, knead masa - dough.

Catalina kneading

Masa means dough as well as pastry but isn’t slang for money whose Spanish equivalent is the carb-laden pasta which, as in English, covers everything from vermicelli to lasagne.  Ser pillado con las manos en la masa is that international embarrassment of to be caught red-handed, literally with your hands in the dough.

The mass that is a church service is misa and although only a small proportion of Spaniards now go to mass regularly, if you hear eso va a misa it means something is set in stone.  ¡Que digan misa! is less than compliant and is the same as let them say what they like!

No puedes estar en misa y repicando – literally you can’t be in Mass and ring the bells too - is the Spanish version of you can’t have your cake and eat it.

The old one-two

An old one-two consisting of two quick punches delivered one after the another is just that: dos puñetazos, uno tras otro but the closest to the one, two that is followed by buckle my shoe would be a la una mi aceituna, a las dos mi reloj - my olive at one, my watch at two. 

Not exactly a nursery rhyme, it was – still is? -  chanted by girls while bouncing a ball against a wall.  It goes up to six, unlike the similar one, two, three a-laira played by English-speaking girls which reaches ten.

Uno es ninguno – one is none refers to a completely different activity and was an often-heard admonition aimed at couples who in the past chose to have just one child. This tended to be pronounced by the parents of the type of large family – familia numerosa that was commonplace until Spain over-reacted by having the lowest birth rate in Europe.

One is one and all alone is lonely in Spanish, too: más solo que la una but to say one by one, opt for uno por uno or uno a uno.  One of a kind is a concise único, a word you also need when translating the one thing, so the one thing I want is la única cosa que quiero.

One and only in a phrase like the one and only Elvis is the faintly fulsome el incomparable Elvis or el irrepitible Elvis. 

There are occasions when one doesn’t enter picture and is implied, not stated: I prefer the new one - prefiero el nuevo but a loved one is un ser querido, literally a loved being, and a little one that is a child turns into una pequeña when female and un pequeño when male. 

Manco is a specific but stark word meaning one-armed that now verges on the politically incorrect and a one-armed bandit or fruit machine is una máquina tragaperras (literally a coin-swallower). 

In one word - as in in one word it was awful - multiplies itself by two to become en dos palabras, fue horroroso but the one moment, please that requests patience or permission to interrupt stays singular: un momento, por favor. 

On the other hand there is a touch of testiness when momento stands unadorned but because Spanish always damns with diminutives, it is infinitely more tetchy when turned into momentito.

The Taming of the Musaraña

 

Anyone looking distracted or disconnected with their surroundings is routinely rebuked estás mirando las musarañas which is approximate to you’re daydreaming or you’re off with the fairies.  It really means you’re looking at the shrews because una musaraña is the Spanish for shrew, which is easily traced to the Latin mus araneus, literally spider mouse, because its bite was once believed to be as venomous as a spider’s. 

English-speakers bestow the name of this small but formidable rodent – roedor on a human shrew or scold.  Typically and unfairly this will always be female, a type who occurs as frequently in Spain as anywhere else although there is no direct translation for her, so Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew becomes La Fierecilla Domada (The wild animal tamed). 

Una arpia – a harpy just about fits the bill, likewise una bruja – witch although neither conveys the correct degree of shrewishness and it’s worth remembering that the Spanish often use witch where we use bitch when not meaning a female dog.  Cascarrabias has the right level of ill humour but is more appropriate for a male grouch.

Una musaraña is an outdoors creature, as is una rata or rat although people who know about these things differentiate between una rata de campo – a field rat and the grey rata de alcantarilla – sewer rat.  Used as an adjective – él es muy rata, for instance – it acquires the meaning of stingy, mean.

Suffixes in Spanish tend to enlarge or diminish so you’d be forgiven for expecting un ratón to be a big rat but instead this is a mouse although, as elsewhere, a Spanish ratón also leads an important double existence as a computer mouse.  There is also more than one side to una ratonera which as well as a mouse trap is also a mousehole, a mouse den and, when applied to a human habitation, a dive or dump as well. 

Un ratoncito, as the diminutive suggests, is a small mouse, as good an excuse as any other for introducing Ratoncito Pérez, the little mouse with a surname who, like the Tooth Fairy in English-speaking countries, leaves money in exchange for a milk tooth – diente de leche whenever he finds one beneath a child’s pillow.

Spoilt for choice

 

There are several ways to spoil, depending on whether the indulged or blighted object is animal or vegetable.  To spoil a child is mimar and one of the first phrases that Spanish children learn to read is mi mama me mima – my mummy spoils me; not only does this beat the cat sat on the mat but seeing it in print at an early age sets a lifelong pattern for mother love and parenting.  A spoilt child is described as mimado although mimoso means affectionate, further proof of how loving frequently comes close to spoiling for Spanish-speakers. 

Malcriar means to bring up badly but it is also regarded as being synonymous with spoiling by those of the “spare the rod” school, as does consentir whose literal meaning is to allow.  Consentido is another description for a spoilt child, illustrating this time how the Spanish still tend to equate an absence of restriction as authorisation for defiance.

Estropear and the adjective estropeado are appropriate for anything that is spoilt because it has gone wrong, ceased to work, is blemished or marred.  Echarse a perder is used for food that spoils or goes off but like the English curdle there is the more specific cortar - it also means to cut - for milk or cream.  Darse un capricho is a self-indulgent, grown-up to spoil oneself and it is not coincidental that a spoilt, demanding child is described as caprichoso although this state of mind and type of behaviour is not exclusive to children and also applies to capricious adults.

To be spoilt for choice is tener mucho de donde eligir but to be spoiling for a fight is andar buscando pelea.  Spoilage is detioro but a spoiler on a racing car or the sort of vehicle favoured by boy racers is un alerón although amongst the most dedicated it remains un spoiler. 

 

A spoiler that gives away the ending of a film, book or television series – pointless in the original version of The Prisoner, for instance, but disastrous for even the tamest Eastenders episode – again echoes English with un spoiler. 

 

Spoils that are booty are botín, which also happens to be the moniker of one of Spain’s leading bankers and just goes to show that some surnames are stranger than fiction.

Nearly there!

Watch this space!  Something will appear in the fullness - or emptiness - of time (but tomorrow at the latest).