By Any Name, It's Still a Rose
This morning I went into town on an errand and saw that it was filled with strangers. The tourists have arrived. I looked up at windows that were normally closed and shuttered, and saw them open and inviting in the cool morning air. The word that automatically popped into my mind was flats. Instead of the American condominium or apartment, my mind reached for the very British, very European, flat.
In Spanish, the word is piso, and literally means floor. A piso is the Spanish equivalent of the American condominium and the British flat, but it has all the nuance of the British conception of the word. It's an apartment, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller, but it's generally owned by the family who lives in it. An apartment building here is almost never owned by one family renting out the apartments like what might happen in the U.S. Generally it's like a condominium building with each apartment privately owned.
The adosados are row houses. But if the term row house brings to mind red brick apartment houses together on a city street, like in Boston's Back Bay, here row houses are generally built in suburban housing tracts and even if built with red brick, look nothing like the stately Boston homes from the nineteenth century. Which is why I prefer the British terraced houses. This term gives the impression that each house has a terrace where the occupants can sit outside, and that the houses are smaller. And the single family, two-story adosados common here, tend to have a front and a back garden, both generally kept private with a high wall, much unlike the row houses I knew back in Boston.
I have gotten used to incorporating some British English words into my vocabulary because they are more akin to life in Europe than the equivalent words in American English, even if they mean the same. The textbooks of the children I help out are in British English. I have learned to use the vocabulary in them and I've gotten used to many of those words. I've even started to use a rubber rather than an eraser. But that one's tricky. Do not ask for a rubber in a stationery store in the U.S. After getting a very funny look, you will be directed to a drug store and you will not be given what you were looking for. It's one of those instances where the gulf between British and American English is as wide as the ocean between them.
One thing that I generally keep American, though, is spelling. I still write practice instead of practise, tire instead of tyre,and color instead of colour. I also eat eggplant instead of aubergine and zucchini instead of courgette. There are things that will always keep the English version I grew up with. Those things are the same both in the U.S. and in Europe, with the same nuances and there I see no need to change my vocabulary, though I do like learning the different words and reaching back through history to the reasons for the differentiation. For example, aubergine is a direct appropriation of the French term for this vegetable, which at some point came from the Arabic. And eggplant refers to the resemblance of the once more common white variety's shape, to eggs.
Variety, even in language, is the spice of life.
In Spanish, the word is piso, and literally means floor. A piso is the Spanish equivalent of the American condominium and the British flat, but it has all the nuance of the British conception of the word. It's an apartment, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller, but it's generally owned by the family who lives in it. An apartment building here is almost never owned by one family renting out the apartments like what might happen in the U.S. Generally it's like a condominium building with each apartment privately owned.
The adosados are row houses. But if the term row house brings to mind red brick apartment houses together on a city street, like in Boston's Back Bay, here row houses are generally built in suburban housing tracts and even if built with red brick, look nothing like the stately Boston homes from the nineteenth century. Which is why I prefer the British terraced houses. This term gives the impression that each house has a terrace where the occupants can sit outside, and that the houses are smaller. And the single family, two-story adosados common here, tend to have a front and a back garden, both generally kept private with a high wall, much unlike the row houses I knew back in Boston.
I have gotten used to incorporating some British English words into my vocabulary because they are more akin to life in Europe than the equivalent words in American English, even if they mean the same. The textbooks of the children I help out are in British English. I have learned to use the vocabulary in them and I've gotten used to many of those words. I've even started to use a rubber rather than an eraser. But that one's tricky. Do not ask for a rubber in a stationery store in the U.S. After getting a very funny look, you will be directed to a drug store and you will not be given what you were looking for. It's one of those instances where the gulf between British and American English is as wide as the ocean between them.
One thing that I generally keep American, though, is spelling. I still write practice instead of practise, tire instead of tyre,and color instead of colour. I also eat eggplant instead of aubergine and zucchini instead of courgette. There are things that will always keep the English version I grew up with. Those things are the same both in the U.S. and in Europe, with the same nuances and there I see no need to change my vocabulary, though I do like learning the different words and reaching back through history to the reasons for the differentiation. For example, aubergine is a direct appropriation of the French term for this vegetable, which at some point came from the Arabic. And eggplant refers to the resemblance of the once more common white variety's shape, to eggs.
Variety, even in language, is the spice of life.
I have a frigo to keep my food, I hoover instead of vac but I put flowers in a Vayse instead of a varse. Between anglo friends from different countries, French my vocabulary is soooo mixed up
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