Q: My college Spanish professor says that the gua in Guatamala, guacamole, etc., is pronounced
"wa." I want to believe her if
for no other reason, I think the words sound better that way. But a friend with a different instructor
insists that the correct pronunciation is the English guttural "gwa."
Who is right?
A: They
both are! In general, the g is
pronounced much as it is in
English, although softer. When i comes
between vowels,
it typically becomes soft enough to sound like an aspirated "h," the
same as the Spanish letter j.
For some speakers, the sound, even at
the beginning of a word, can become so soft as to be unnoticeable to English
speakers, and perhaps even inaudible. Historically,
that's what happened with the Spanish h.
Succeeding generations made its sound
softer and softer, eventually causing its sound to disappear. The "standard" pronunciation would
be to sound out the g, but
more softly than in English. But
pronunciation does vary with region, and speakers in some areas often do drop
the sounds of some letters.
Updated November 1, 2012 His paintings mimic those of famous abstract and
impressionist painters. They appear to
be heavily influenced by Jackson Pollock or Vincent Van Gogh. But the artist himself more closely resembles
Smart Jones or Secretariat. Justin is a
nine-year old 1500-pound Friesian horse that began painting two years ago. His owner, Adonna Combs, noticed that Justin
would often steal her riding whip and begin to draw in the sand. She soon added a brush to the end of the whip
and they were off on art experiment that has now landed Justin in regional
galleries and drawn international attention. "It just made sense to tie a brush on the
end of the whip, so I did. And to my
surprise he kept painting.He kept making those brushs strokes." Now his collection has grown. And they're selling too from $75 up to $2500
dollars a piece. He paints as he
pleases, Adonna usually picks out the colors but after that it's up to Justin,
she says. Justin has painted in public
only four times. This weekend marked his
first exhibit in his home studio near Columbus, Indiana. See pictures at: http://www.wdrb.com/story/19938550/indiana-artist-gaining-international-attention?clienttype=printable
If you could pick a small
selection of books to represent you, what would they be? Over 100 creative types, including chefs,
writers, architects and filmmakers, answered the question for "My Ideal
Bookshelf," edited by Thessaly La Force (Little, Brown, $24.99). James Joyce and Marcel Proust make expected
appearances—as do "Harriet the Spy" and "The Complete Far
Side." Sherlock Holmes shows up on
the shelves of both writer Michael Chabon and doctor/author Atul Gawande. Writer James Patterson: Gabriel García Márquez's 'One Hundred Years
of Solitude' floored me as a younger reader. I think it drove me into writing
thrillers, because I realized I couldn't do anything at his level. Chef Alice Waters: Elizabeth David's was my first cookbook. I fell in love with the way she thought about
food, the way she tasted food, the way she wrote about food.… http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203406404578074762903019402.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5
Michelin produced a series of cards starring Bibendum (the stacked-tire figure better known as the Michelin man)
in a number of countries.--Cards to Write Home About
Bibendum was supposedly
inspired by a stack of Michelin tires at an 1894 trade show in Lyon, although
he didn't take form until he was featured in an advertising poster in 1898,
which bore the Latin motto "Nunc est bibendum" ("It's time to
drink"). Michelin tires were
supposed to "drink up obstacles." Early versions of the Michelin man wore a
pince-nez and smoked a cigar, too. Erin
McKean http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204530504578078852012579378.html?mod=WSJ_LifeStyle_Lifestyle_5
OVER the last decade Jaume Plensa has
become one of the world’s most celebrated public artists, best known for
wondrously monumental figurative sculptures that can be seen from Calgary to
Dubai. But ask this Barcelona native how
he creates his work, which seems to involve feats of technology as well as
imagination, and he prefers to talk about music, dreams and poetry. “Shakespeare is the best
definition of sculpture,” he might say, quoting the “sleep no more” soliloquy
from Macbeth. “You are working always
with physical elements. You are always
touching, touching. But you can’t
describe it.” Clearly, though, more than
poetry has gone into “Echo,”
his 44-foot-high sculpture of a girl’s head, which was raised in
Madison Square Park in late April 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/arts/design/jaume-plensa-and-monumental-figurative-sculptures.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
See video
(32") of Jaume Plensa's 2010 sculpture, Spiegel, at Yorkshire Sculpture
Park in November 2011 at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLY8KZ1qoHg
Spiegel, a
12-foot-tall sculpture, the gift of an anonymous donor, has been placed at the
edge of the Toledo Museum of Art's campus at Monroe Street and Collingwood
Boulevard.
A rebus is an allusional device that uses pictures to represent
words or parts of words. It was a
favourite form of heraldic expression used in the Middle Ages
to denote surnames, for example in its basic form three salmon fish to
denote the name "Salmon".
The term rebus also refers to the use of a pictogram to
represent a syllabic
sound. This adapts pictograms into
phonograms. A precursor to the
development of the alphabet, this process represents one of the most important
developments of writing.
Fully developed hieroglyphs read in
rebus fashion were in use at Abydos in Egypt as early as 3400 BCE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebus
I Love New York is both a logo
and a song that are
the basis of an advertising campaign and have been used since the
mid-1970s to promote tourism in New
York City, and later to promote New York State
as well. The trademarked
logo appears in souvenir shops and brochures throughout the state, some licensed,
many not. The song is the state song
of New York. The logo is a rebus borrowed by Milton
Glaser from a Montreal radio campaign.
CJAD Montreal Quebec Canada ran a campaign entitled "Montreal, the
city with a heart". The logo
consists of the capital letter I, followed by a red heart
symbol (♥), below which are the capital
letters N and Y, set in a rounded slab serif
typeface
called American Typewriter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_New_York
The new Ohio
voting sticker is a play on the "I heart NY" image, with the
state of Ohio replacing the heart so that the sticker reads, "I heart
voting."* Fittingly, Ohio
Secretary of State Jon Husted put the new design up to a vote. "While voting is serious business,
selecting our state's next 'I Voted Today' sticker provided an outreach
opportunity to get both younger and older Ohioans excited about the voting
process," Husted, a Republican,
said in a statement. "The Election Day sticker is worn as a badge of honor
by many and I wanted Ohioans to have the chance to voice their opinion and help
pick our new design." The winning
sticker received 38 percent of the vote, beating out five other designs. The second-place sticker received 37 percent
of the vote — only 352 fewer votes than the winner. The election began in May
2011 and 59,272 votes were cast. See
winning sticker plus the five also-rans and number of votes cast at: http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2011/08/winning_design_for_new_i_voted.html
* The sticker was
first used on November 6, 2012 with some people reading it as "I
voting," and others reading it as "I Ohio voting."
disenthrall transitive
verb to free from bondage, liberate First
known use: 1643
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disenthrall
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty,
and we must rise with the occasion. As
our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we
shall save our country." Lincoln's
Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862.
"If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this
shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best
I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's
said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels
swearing I was right would make no difference." The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln: Six
Months at the White House by Francis B. Carpenter (Lincoln, Nebraska, University
of Nebraska Press, 1995), pp. 258-259. http://rogerjnorton.com/Lincoln78.html
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