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14 sept 2011

Obscenity

I spent all morning preparing a class on swearing in Spanish. Obviously this is a topic I could spend even more time on it if I were a real expert. Camilo José Cela wrote an entire dictionary of obscenities. One volume is devoted exclusively to testicles. Another volume is on the penis. It's a little awkward because all nine students in the class are women. Really, though, obscenity is not (mostly) about sex at all. Sex is the vehicle of the metaphor.

4 comentarios:

  1. If it's not to late, do you know this one?
    http://spanishteachingissues.blogspot.com/2011/07/spanish-teaching-materials.html

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  2. Hilarious. This is real, hard-core cursing.

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  3. That's one of the things I remember from childhood, listening through the walls from my room, Dad and Cela arguing in the living room. Cela wanted to be taken down to the barrio to find a Spanish speaking whore. Dad was saying this was a bad idea generally, and that especially with the mouth Cela had on him, he was likely to insult someone and get himself killed. He was arguably the slimiest character that was ever invited to speak at that department, just oozed it.

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