Whatchamacallits, thingimijigs and wotsits

The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains 171,476 full entries of words in current use. Once you add on all the odds and ends (the words found stuck up in trees or sewn neatly into the hem of a pair of trousers worn by W.C.Fields in 1935, for example) you end up with about a quarter of a million words. The 22nd edition of the Diccionario de la Real Academia Español contains 90, 000 words. In other words, if words were missiles then the English language could launch a successful first strike against Spanish and still have plenty left over to deal with the French.

Now, the way in which we respond to this information will depend, quite clearly, on our nationality. The British will sit back smugly in their chairs, turn on Radio 4 and fall asleep. The Spanish, on the other hand, will deny loudly the fact that English has more words, blame the politicians and then go on holiday for a month in August. However, I should point out that I have yet to see Spaniards lost for words. So, the fact that Spanish operates with 90, 000 words has never stopped any Spaniard from expressing himself.

It should also be pointed out that it could be argued that Spanish, as a language, does not exist. In 1714 Philip V took one look at the list of languages spoken by his subjects and said:
-Bugger that, the only one I'm going to listen to is Castilian. And I'm the king so do what you're told!
Confronted by this creation of an official language, the speakers of High Aragonese, Aranese, Asturian, Basque, Caló, Catalan, Extremaduran, Fala Extremaduran, Galician and Mirandes, did what Spaniards usually do when confronted by a strong central authority intent in interfering in the cultural identity of its citizens: they ignored it. Even Franco could not stop the people of Spain speaking the language of their faithers and mithers. And by the way, the speakers of Valenciano get really pissed off if you say they speak a variety of Catalan and never, ever say that they both sound like French. No wonder the Habsburgs, after a century or so of governing a bunch of people, or peoples, who couldn't even agree they lived in the same country said:
-Game's a bogey,
and left it to the Bourbons to sort it out.

I should also add that Spanish, if it exists, and Castilian if it doesn't, is an incredibly economical language. English depends a great deal on phrasal verbs to convey meaning. Without the sentence "Shall we get on the bus now?" the English-speaking world would have ended up as a group of aimless nomadic-wanderers clustered around bus stops. A Spaniard, on the other hand, would say:
-¿Subimos?-
After all if you are already at the bus stop and if a bus is there and everyone knows that they are there to get on the bus then why in the name of ¡mis cojones santos! (my sainted balls) would anyone want to discuss this? ¡Coño!

You'll notice that I didn't translate Coño. That's because I can't. You see, it's the "C" word in English. In Spanish (Castilian), however, it is an incredibly useful interjection that can be used in a variety of situations. It can be used to express anger: ¡Esa abeja me ha picado!¡Coño! - "That damn bee stung me!"; it can be used to express surprise: ¿Están saliendo juntos? ¡Coño! - "Are they really going out? Jings!" It can even be used by grandmothers. So, once again Spanish/Castilian has found a way of expressing different feelings with a single word. They just had to pick the one word which in English can never be used in public.

So, once again, context is everything when living in Spain. I found this out, yet again, a couple of weeks ago when my girlfriend and her daughter were having an argument. Or, possibly, they were having a barney, a set-to, a strong exchange of views, a right old ding-dong. a shouting match or perhaps they were even going at it like cats and dogs. You could call it a dispute, a disgreement, a squabble or a bit of a rhubarb. After all, voices were raised, the phrase -¡No me escuchas!- ("You're not listening to me!"- four words and a contraction in English compared to three in Spanish, by the way) was used repeatedly and forcefully. They were, in Spanish, discutiendo; in English, arguing, from the verb discutir, to argue. However, and this would explain why they could break off from shouting at each other and laugh at the look of concern on my face, discutir also means to discuss. Far from having an argument, they were merely having a loving discussion between mother and daughter.

Now, there are other words in Spanish which mean the same as discutir , for example disputar. But I have only ever heard them use discutir. To be honest, I think they do this on purpose, use one word to express different meanings. The longer I stay here the more sympathy I feel for anyone whose lot it was to be in charge of this bunch of linguistic acrobats. When the subjects of Philip V were paying him homage, rindiendo homenaje, it could never have been far from his mind that a synonym of rendir is fatigar, to exhaust or tire out. More than once, swamped by this never-ending outpouring of ambiguity, he must have thought:
-Oh Jeez, gie's a break!
To which I can only add:
-¡Coño!-