Not only hot but humid too this week.

The temperatures are actually not too “roasty” but humidity of 60/70/80%+ makes it a bit unbearable.

Although – oddly enough – I got very little sympathy at networking this morning…

If truth be known its not the temperatures or the humidity that’re the issue but having to work in them as well.

If you had your feet up in a deckchair with a nice cool beer I don’t imagine for a moment I’d be concerned.

But sitting in my little corner of the dining room with the laptop and screen pumping out even more heat? Very different kettle of fish.

Están hechos de otra pasta

Going off on one of my inevitable tangents shows that this might be the Spanish equivalent. Or even Esto es cualitativamente algo diferente.

Not much difference there… the first translates as they are facts from a different paste and the second as this is qualitatively something different.

So the first is more colloquial I suspect, certainly more than the latter.

I’m going to sleep July and August away – next year. Image by Greg Montani from Pixabay

Spanish is an interesting language with lots of words that bear more than a fleeting resemblance to English. Which begs the question, who borrowed from whom?

Like cualitativamente. Doesn’t take a genius to have a good guess what it might mean.

The mente ending is in lots of Spanish words, presumably the equivalent of the English adding ment to a word.

Another one you start finding examples of is idad, in English ity.

Take natividad. Not too difficult, eh? Or even sin dificilmente. Don’t forget to pronounce the final ‘e’.

In some words there seems to be an extra syllable or two. Take la computadora. Not too difficult to recognise. Or ventilador for fan.

For a long time I was sure Spanish was two languages bolted together as there is usually two completely different nouns for the same thing.

La computadora or el ordenador describe exactly the same thing for example.

And so many of them were male/female pairs that I started wondering if the second was always the opposite sex of the first.

Well no.

This week’s lessons introduced two terms for sink, the thing you wash your hands or the plates in. And both masculine.

El lavamanos and el fregadero.

And the trouble with a bit too much knowledge but not enough?

Lava is obviously from the verb lavar to wash. But manos suggests it’s for washing hands. Plural. And I happen to know that manos is feminine. Go figure.

So the item for washing your female plural hands is – masculine. Obvious really!

Best of this week’s Duolingo-isms? Got to be Papa no peude enterarse de que trajiste un oso a casa. Dad cannot find out that you brought a bear home.

The other extreme is the number of very small words, three or less letters that litter sentences.

He is going to give it to them becomes el se lo va a dar. Or he they it going to give. Easy innit?

Enough of the language lessons for this week.

I thought yesterday was National be as Noisy as you can Day.

Certainly bloody seemed like it.

Someone is (part?) demolishing the house three doors down from us.

Which was being done by a man with a pneumatic hammer. Unsurprisingly Amazon seem to have a large selection in Spain.

So that was fun. But he was also listening to music while he did it. And you could hear the music over the machinery!

Noticed someone else doing the same elsewhere on our way back from lunch.

I think the one near us was also wearing ear defenders which makes you wonder what of the music could he hear?

But the second one was being done by a teenager/early-20s maybe with no ear protection whatsoever.

I’m usually one of the first to gripe about health and safety but in this case I thought the kid was mad.

Also taking into account the Spanish lack of soft furnishings as a way of trying to shed heat and the noise levels were stupendous. Or estupendo.

Easy really.

Add to that bikes with sawn (how is that not in the spellchecker?) off exhausts and youths with car stereos bigger than their egos, all desperate to share their musical taste and…

National noisy day or whatever I called it above.

Not only hot but humid makes it hard to shut out the outside world.

Which has been reflected in the lack of productive work yesterday which has bled over into today.

And of course it’s Thursday so early finish to do my Spanish before going out tonight.

And Friday off so half a week productivity lost through no fault of my own.

Makes me annoyed but at least there’s always next week.

For future years I’ve decided to rearrange my working life to not do anything for July and August so I’m not adding to the burden.

That’s what I’m hoping so wish me luck!

Not only hot but humid.

If you missed my video last week, take a glance at last week’s post. It’s getting big reviews.