Baldo by Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos for April 23, 2009

I believe she’s thinking that if the blouse falls apart, the jacket will hide it.

So now what happens when the jacket falls apart in one day?

Over the years I have been learning to read a little Spanish by daily comparison of the English and Spanish “Baldo” strips. For example, today there were three separate instances of the grammar of the word “hacer”, meaning “to do”.

But this daily comparison has also shown me that next to the richness and flexibility of English, Spanish is somewhat limited. For example, part of today’s joke in English is a pun on the word “last”. But in Spanish there is no pun, just leaving Tia Carmen’s silliness to carry the weight of the joke. And often a clever comment in English appears in Spanish as a blunt, straight-forward statement.

There is a certain elegance to Spanish grammar, a remnant of its roots in Latin, but I am glad that English is my native language.

pschearer is on the nail; it’s basically a pun (or is it a double-entendre?) about “last” which only worketh in English.

Tia Carmen needs to try other colors besides purple.

pschearer, you’re right, Spanish does seem to be “limited.” I guess the advantage in that is fewer words to learn (although the verb conjugations make up for it)! I can’t imagine having to learn a language like English, though. All of our grammar/pronunciation rules have exceptions! In this particular case of word-play, it shows the difference in humor across languages/cultures. Maybe I should start making a daily Eng-Span comparison of this strip to aid in my learning Spanish.

For carmy: maybe she still has the old Roman (as in Imperial) belief that purple is a royal colour, ergo it makes her royalty.

Of course, there are also Spanish puns that lose their wit in translation to English. For example, the word “nada” means both “he/she/it swims” and “nothing”, so the riddle “Que hace un pez?” (What does a fish do?) can be answered by “nada” with a double meaning.

I once thought French was limited in that long poetry couldn’t be that doable. Then I realized I was judging from the perspective of a teenager who’d only taken the language for two years. I’d also argue that English has its own limitations, such as only one word for love.

BlueRaven, LOVE (Amore) sólo necesita una palabra :)

And yet, there are many words in Spanish that require four or five words in English to translate. If you only know the basics of a language, you will never appreciate it’s subtlety.