Translation, Perfume And Fruit

Translating Time

I've been amused for years by foreign football players and managers struggling with English words that express time: time itself, moment, period and (by implication) patch, spell, run, sequence, stage, etc. And now I've seen that Gareth Southgate, manager of England' Under-21 team, has caught the disease. I've seen him quoted as saying that “we are in a good moment”. Who on earth who is English and not exposed to foreigners struggling with our language would express the thought that their team was having a good patch or a good run of results by saying “we are in a good moment”?

Bizarre changes do occur in language evolution. We have the verb to sidle (up to someone) only because someone centuries ago thought that the ancient noun a sideling (assistant) must be the present participle of a verb, as in singing, talking, etc, and so invented the verb to sidle. It hadn't existed beforehand and has no other origin. The word time in English doesn't translate easily into most romance languages; their general equivalent, be it temps, tiempo, or whatever, applies to the concept of time but not always to a period of it; it depends on context. Saying that a football team was having a good temps, tiempo or whatever would mean that they were living it up, so foreign football staff use what they assume to be the English equivalent of their word in that context, which would be moment, momento or whatever. But a moment in English is very much shorter than the period of time they are talking about. If the prevalence of foreign football players and coaches in England persists, however, they may succeed not only in changing our football style but also our language.

Yellow Hillsides

The hillsides around here are probably best known popularly for groves of olive trees or rows of vines and those are certainly abundant. But between the months of March and June the hillsides are a blaze of yellow, as in the photo. Towards the middle of March coronilla starts bloomimg, not only colouring the hillsides but also perfuming the landscape. Coronilla has special connotations for me as it was one of my mother's favourite flowers, although it wasn't easy to find plants in UK garden centres. Here it grows wild, everywhere. Then, as the coronilla fades, broom starts to bloom and the photo here shows just one hillside between Mollans and Buis covered in its flowers. Later on, higher up, there will be fields of lavendar and, lower down, fields of sunflowers, but for the moment this area can claim the prize for the most attractive landscape.

Fruit

It's been asparagus and strawberry season for the past six weeks and I've been indulging heavily in both. About a week ago I decided I didn't want to eat any more asparagus for a while. This evening friends Hallie and Mary came to drink wine on my balcony and stick their noses in all the honeysuckle growing over the front of the house. The honeysuckle has been there for some years now and always flowers but for some reason this an exceptional year; honeysuckles front and back are covered in bloom and, in the evening, perfume the whole house. I offered Hallie and Mary some strawberries with their wine and both said, reluctantly, that they really couldn't eat another strawberry. I know how they feel but, for the moment, strawberries are still me. The first apricots are now appearing in the markets though and the first melons and peaches won't be far behind. It's all looking good for a fruitaholic like me.