Spring   In New York, spring is here, or as Dr Harold Lenz of Queens College would often announce his own arrival, “Der Lenz ist da!”. On the esplanade under my windows along the river the trees are abloom, and a block up the street in Rector Park there are several large beds of pink tulips in flower as well. This week I avoided the large weekend crowds I encountered last year at the cherry blossom festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and went during the week. All May I’ve been following the online map showing just which cherry trees are in pre-bloom, first bloom, peak bloom, or post-bloom stage, and I got there when all the trees on the vast Cherry Esplanade were in peak bloom, as were those along the Cherry Walk. This year it was too early for the peonies, which weren’t out yet as they were last year with the cherries, but the lilacs were in profusion: white, pink, and more shades of purple than you could imagine, including, well, lilac.

Earlier in the week I went to an evening member reception at the New-York Historical Society. They were featuring an exhibit of paintings by Asher Durand (1796-1886), one of the painters in the Hudson River School. There were bucolic river views, and some attractive portraits, including several self-portraits, but I enjoyed seeing something quite unusual. In 1821, Durand designed for the Society an engraving of Henry Hudson’s Half Moon sailing up the river, which was then used on the N-YHS Membership Certificate. In return, he was given a complimentary membership. The Certificate, in use until 1904, was framed and on display as a work of art.

There was also a large exhibit of Audubon bird drawings, but what caught my attention was the new Tiffany exhibit. Some years ago, long before I was a member, we saw at the N-YHS a very large exhibit on Tiffany lamps, vases, and other items from their extensive collection, from which we first learned quite a bit about the “favrile” iridescent art glass developed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and patented by him in 1894. (The Morse Museum in Winter Park FL, which we visited twice, also has an extensive Tiffany collection.) However, only recently, upon the discovery of letters and papers of Clara Driscoll (1861-1944), was it discovered that she, and not LC Tiffany, designed virtually all the “Tiffany” lamps for which he was given automatic credit as owner of the company. Driscoll was in charge of the Women’s Glass Cutting Department, and designed, among others, the Wisteria, Dragonfly, and Peony lamps. She was assisted by dozens of women in her department, called the “Tiffany Girls”, and an attempt was made in the exhibit to also give as much credit to them as possible by listing their names, although some names were only partial. The exhibit encompassed about 50 items, including the most famous lamps.

Italic Languages   In preparation for my upcoming trip back to Portugal and Spain (also England), and especially after discussing Germanic languages so completely last year in Scandinavia, I’d like to review what we said in our discussion of the Indo-European languages regarding the sub-group of Italic languages. [Note: Italic is a valid name, one that I prefer to the nonsensical name “Romance Languages”, a term I do not use. Another very valid name would be Latinate languages, since these are the languages that are the daughters of Latin. However, I prefer Italic, since Italy is where the languages originated.]

I am going to use a metaphor to describe these Italic languages as a group of sisters. Picture a row of attached houses with sisters living in them, then picture one sister who lives several long blocks away, and not together with the rest. This imagery might be the easiest way to describe both the relationships and the locations of these languages.

[I need to state at the outset that I am purposely postponing discussion here of the Basque language and people, who live along the Atlantic coast, 2/3 in Spain and 1/3 in France. Basque is a language isolate, not related to any other one anywhere, and I’ll discuss it when I’m in the Basque Country in a few weeks. The current discussion covers exclusively the related group of Italic languages.]

The westernmost “house” on the “block” is the Iberian peninsula, which covers Portugal and Spain. Three of the sisters share the house in Iberia: Portuguese, Castellano (Spanish), and Catalan.

The next house on the block is set back considerably from the building line of the others, and lies quite a bit further north. This house is France. Inhabiting this house is French, plus a dying sister living upstairs quietly in a back bedroom, Occitan.

The last house in this contiguous row of attached buildings is Italy, home of Italian.

The final sister lives quite a distance away, not adjoining the rest of the others. This sister is Romanian, whose house, Romania, has an add-on structure, Moldova.

Again, here are the four “houses”: Iberia, France, Italy, Romania. Let’s look at the sisters living in them.

Iberia is what it is today because of the Arabs, referred to historically as the Moors. First look at the parallel of the Turks (not related to the Arabs, but also Moslem), who invaded all of southeastern Europe “up to the gates of Vienna”, and occupied the area for centuries. Only very gradually did Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and others gradually gain the territory back, although never quite totally, since part of Turkey to this day still lies in Europe, the area around Istanbul/Constantinople.

Iberia was affected similarly. In 711 the Moors invaded the Iberian Peninsula and also stayed for centuries. Gradually, various local kingdoms regained more and more territory back from the Moors, until in 1492 the last of the Moors were expelled from Spain, the march forward largely led by the kingdom of Castilla/Castile. That famous date is not a coincidence. Fernando e Isabel (“Ferdinand and Isabella”), usually referred to in Spanish as Los Reyes Católicos (The Catholic King & Queen) primarily because of their role in expelling the Moors, had Columbus wait for their financing of his first trip until the more important business of the Moors was completed.

The fact that Castilla/Castile led the way in the expulsion made that kingdom the leading kingdom on the peninsula. As a matter of fact, at one point, Castilla itself had taken control of the entire peninsula, including what is now Portugal. Portugal (or most of it, see below) managed to break away again and remains independent to this day, but Catalonia never did, nor did Galicia.

Consider the entire western end of Iberia as one unit. The lower 2/3 is Portugal, and independent. That upper 1/3 is the part of Spain called Galicia (ga.LI.sha in English, ga.LI.thya in Spanish). It’s the area where Santiago is. Some claim that the local “language” spoken there, called Gallego, is a separate language within Spain, which is certainly true, and has nothing to do with Portuguese, which is nonsense. As I see it, the part of the Portuguese-speaking area that never became part of an independent Portugal is, quite simply, Galicia, and Gallego, while somewhat different from Portuguese, is nevertheless a dialect of Portuguese, spoken within Spain. I would say that Portuguese covers the entire Atlantic coast of Iberia, Gallego being a dialect of it spoken within Spain.

[We’ve seen the word “Gallego” before recently, in Mexico. In the Copper Canyon (Reflections 2007, Series 2), out of Cerocahui, we had the bus ride to the Mirador del Cerro del Gallego/Gallego Mountain Viewpoint. Since Gallego means both the Galician you speak and also a person from Galicia, the name more precisely would mean Viewpoint at the Galician’s Mountain. Of course in Spain, it’s pronounced ga.LYE.go, with LYE rhyming with café.]

Castilla lies in the center of Spain, centered on Madrid. Its historic influence has extended over Galicia and the Catalan area, making it the national language. In Spanish, you can say you’re speaking Castellano (ca.ste.LYA.no) as a synonym of saying you’re speaking Español.

If the Atlantic coast of Iberia on the west is the part of the “house” where the Portuguese sister lives, and the large center strip where the Castellano sister lives, then the Mediterranean coast of Iberia on the east is where the Catalan sister lives, specifically in Catalonia (Cataluña in Spanish, Catalunya in Catalan) at the north end, surrounding Barcelona, and the Comunitat Valenciana further south around Valencia. It is also spoken on the Balearic Islands, discussed later. And there is one independent country whose language it is: Andorra.

Earlier in the 20C, especially under the Franco dictatorship, anything but Castellano was surpressed, but in recent decades, these other languages mentioned (including Basque) have made a renaissance. Do not think that Catalan is a passing fancy. In its region, 75% of the population speaks it actively, and 95% understand it passively.

The situation in France is unusual, and I’ll come back to that in a moment. The easternmost continuous “house” is Italy, where obviously Italic started. To my way of thinking, Italian has to maintain a slightly elevated role. To explain this, let’s start with Ancient Greek.

Ancient Greek spread out beyond Greece; Sicily and Naples (Neapolis) were Greek colonies, as was, for instance, Marseille in France. But these outer colonies disappeared, and now, Greece, the home of Ancient Greek, is also the home of its descendent, Modern Greek. I see the situation with Latin as parallel. If Italy (Rome) was where Italic, and Latin started, the “ancestral house” as it were, and the outlying descendents such as Spanish didn’t die out as with Greek but survived, still the modern language spoken in the ancestral home should to my way of thinking take a role as primus inter pares/first among equals. It should also be noted that Italian has resemblances with Latin that Latin’s other descendents do not. For instance, S-plurals are common in the others, but Italian is the only one that uses vowel-plurals, just like Latin did. For example, look at both Latin and Italian words you see in English. Latin alumnus has a plural alumni (note: I) for the guys, alumna has a plural alumnae (note: E) for the gals. In Italy, a signore headed for a restroom looks for “Signori” (note: I) and a signora looks for “Signore” (note: E). Then just take a look at the pasta shelf at the supermarket: spaghetti and rigatoni, and also penne and linguine. I see Italian as just a bit closer to the ancestor, Latin, than the others.

Romanian has a house a few blocks away. The area used to be contiguous with the rest of the Roman empire, but then the Slavs and others came and settled in between, cutting Romanian off from its sisters. I just read that Romanian has a lexical similarity (similarity of words) of about 75% with its sister Italic languages, meaning that, maybe three out of four words could be recognizable, although between the others, the rate would be considerably higher. The language of Moldova, which used to be part of the Soviet Union and is now independent, is Romanian.

And now, back to France. French is noticeably different from the other “sisters”, since it doesn’t have the many O and A vowel endings the others have. (Compare Milano, Granada, Lisboa with Paris, Lyon). Historically, there were two Italic languages in France, not only French in the northern 2/3, but also Occitan in the southern 1/3. Occitania covers several old provinces, but since the most famous of these is Provence, a frequently used name for Occitan is Provençal. French and Occitan were distinguished by their word for “yes’”. Occitan uses “òc” to say “yes”. This gives Occitan its name, and also an alternate name, Langue d’oc “oc-language”. There was also an old province in the south named Languedoc. Oc derived from the Latin word “hoc”, meaning “this”.

In the north, the Latin words “hoc ille” (“this [is] it”) developed into oïl, and the language spoken there was called Langue d’oïl “oïl-language”, which developed into French, and oïl continued to develop into “oui”. People who study French often learn about the oïl/oc difference between French and Occitan, but my current review found more to the picture. It was Dante who made this distinction, and there’s more to it.

I’m planning on discussing the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in September on a travel-related subject in the US Southwest, so I’ll just make a brief reference now. It was Dante who not only came up with the term (in Italian) lingua d’oc, but he was the one who first differentiated the Italic languages by the way they said “yes”. I’ll be making the point later that Dante was one of the first to further the Italian language in his writings instead of writing in Latin, but in any case, this quote of Dante’s is still in Latin, so presumably is an older quote:

Discussing how the Italic languages say “yes”, he says that it’s

So now I see that it’s not just the two-way distinction I’d heard about earlier, but a full three-way distinction, oïl (oui) / òc / si, going from north to south.

Occitan today, however, is a dying language in France, which is why I referred to it as a “dying sister in an upstairs bedroom in this house”. Its fate is quite distinct from Catalan in Spain, which thrives. Perhaps as few as 500,000 Occitan speakers are left. One can see Occitan on occasion on street signs or in place names. There are those that try to promote it, but as older generations die off, the number of speakers is reduced.

So the “house” inhabited by France (and Occitan) stands out by being set further back (further north) than the adjacent “houses”, Iberia and Italy. Disregarding Occitan òc, we have the distinction of saying oui in French as opposed to si in most of the others.

But let me make a few points:
1. Romanian uses “da” to say “yes”, showing the Slavic influence surrounding it.
2. You sometimes must use “si” to say “yes” in French—see Reflections 2003 Series 14.
3. Consider the Latin word “sic”, meaning thus, used in English when quoting something with an error in it to identify that you realize there’s an error. “Sic” lost it’s C and is what “si” developed from.
4. Consider again my beautiful walled city in the South of France that I refer to frequently as Eg Mort, actually spelled Aigues Mortes. It does mean Dead Waters because of the swampy areas around it. But that would in French be O Mort, spelled Eaux Mortes. As it turns out “aigues” is not French, but instead Occitan for “waters”, and largely resembles Spanish “aguas”.

There are many things that Italic languages have in common, which is equally true internally for Germanic and Slavic languages (and other groups). I want to end by mentioning two sounds, and then show some related words.

All the Italic languages (except distant Romanian) developed two special sounds, called palatalized consonants. Logic would dictate that these two sounds came about as a later development in Latin before Latin turned into these languages, otherwise there wouldn’t be such uniformity. These two consonants are NY and LY.

They are each single sounds, made by forming a Y with your tongue, and then saying either an N or an L along with it. However, you can “fake it” if you will by pronouncing them as two sounds each, N+Y and L+Y.

NY is the most uniform, since it still exists in all the languages. Just the spelling is different. NY in Spanish is spelled Ñ, but that’s only Spanish. The three languages in the Iberian “house” use the exact same word for “mister”, but spell it PRT senhor, SPN señor, CAT senyor. For NY in Italian and French, both share the same, quite unusual spelling: GN. This spelling appears in signore in Italian and monseigneur in French.

This unusual GN spelling appears also in English words borrowed from French. What is logically poinyant is actually spelled poignant, and filay minyon is spelled filet mignon.

The other palatalized consonant, LY is more problematic, since it’s started to disappear in some locations. In Portuguese, LY is spelled as in batalha “battle”, reminiscent of the senhor spelling. In both Castilian and Catalan, LY is spelled LL as in batalla.

Just as Italian uses a GN spelling, for LY it uses a GL spelling, as in the opera I Pagliacci. For the city of Seville, the Spanish spelling Sevilla is parallel to Seviglia to correspond to the same pronunciation (except that the Spanish V is a B). Note, for example, the opera Il Barbiere di Seviglia.

But the LY has degenerated in two instances, losing the L element and leaving only Y. As we know, one example is in American Spanish, where batalla, ba.TA.lya in Castilian, appears instead in reduced form as ba.TA.ya in American Spanish.

The other instance is in French. Just as in American Spanish, what used to be LY, is also just Y, although the spelling shows L’s. For instance, the name Seville in French is se.VI.yuh, just as Marseille is mar.SE.yuh and Versailles is ver.SA.yuh. The vegetable salad from Provence spelled ratatouille is pronounced ra.ta.TWI.yuh (although some English speakers bastardize it to ra.ta.TU.i).

Finally, we have some vocabulary examples between the Italic languages. These are obviously hand-picked to show the widest universality, so do realize that not all words show such extensive similarity. I’ll show the languages from west to east, as described earlier.

to sing: PRT cantar; SPN cantar; CAT cantar; OCC cantar/chantar; FRN chanter; ITL cantare; ROM cânta

goat: PRT cabra; SPN cabra: CAT cabra; OCC cabra/chabra; FRN chèvre; ITL capra; ROM capră

language: PRT lingua; SPN lengua; CAT llengua; OCC lenga/lengua; FRN langue; ITL lingua; ROM limbă

(city) square: PRT praça; SPN plaza; CAT plaça; OCC plaça; FRN place; ITL piazza; ROM piaţă [the letter ţ represents TS, so this word sounds like ITL piazza]

Iberia & The Islands   Moving from language to travel, I want to talk about past travel experiences to Iberia, both Portugal and Spain. Then I want to discuss The Islands, and by that, I don’t mean small sprinklings of islands such as “the Greek islands” or “the Caribbean islands”, I mean the several major islands in the western Mediterranean to the south of the Iberia-France-Italy arc we’ve been discussing: Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearics of Mallorca and Ibiza.

I’ve just reviewed Beverly’s travel diaries to see just when we were in Iberia and The Islands. It seems the years were 1965, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1990. Until this tally, I had the feeling that these Iberian trips had been more spread out, whereas I see now that they are really concentrated at the end of the 1980’s.

1965-Iberia   This is not a travelog and I have no intention of describing, or even mentioning, every stop we made, but I do want to give an overview and some impressions that remain. In 1965 we had just been married three years and went to Iberia on the cheap, loving every minute of it. We always used “Europe on $5 a Day” in those years and found very pleasant, small hotels at what were then unbelievably bargain rates, so today they seem like pocket change. In Lisbon we paid the equivalent in escudos of $3.30 per person per day—and that included three meals. In Seville it was the peseta equivalent of 67 cents. In Algeciras (al.khe.THI.ras), opposite Gibraltar, I always continue to remember that we found a very nice place at the lowest rate we’ve ever paid, anywhere: 60 cents pppd. Let me do the rest: Granada $1.04, Madrid $2.08, Palma de Mallorca $2.40, Barcelona $1.10. That’s how two newlywed teachers were able to travel so extensively. On that trip we then went on to the Middle East.

That trip was an introductory one to the area, although we didn’t go back for another 20 years. But then after that flurry of trips there in the ’80’s, this will be my first time back in 17 years. Also, in 1965, both countries were still right-wing dictatorships, Salazar in Portugal and Franco in Spain, and you could tell it in the atmosphere. Going back in the ’80’s was such an improvement over the past that it was almost like going back to Russia again in 2005 after having been in the Soviet Union in 1971.

One other oddity of that trip was that it was all by air. In those years, airlines allowed multiple stopovers, so we flew to Lisbon, then to Seville, and so on. We did it because it was cheaper that way, but I’m glad they don’t do that anymore, since land travel is so much more interesting.

1965 was the only time we were in both Portugal and Spain during the same trip until now. Also, since we flew, I’ve never crossed the land border between the two and will do it for the first time now. For that matter, Iberia is far enough down in the southwestern corner of Europe that I’ve never crossed the land border between Spain and France and going on into Europe, although there is one trivial exception mentioned below.

1985a-Canary Islands   In 1985 we went to Spain twice—sort of, since not both times were to Iberia. During February vacation that year we flew to the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa, which are part of Spain. We stayed in Las Palmas, capital of Gran Canaria, and drove all over the island, including to the top of the tallest mountain. We also took the ferry to Tenerife on a day trip, and rented a car there.

Two memories persist. In Las Palmas, we toured the Governor’s Palace. That wouldn’t have been all that unique, except it was the place that Columbus stayed, I believe more than once, on his trips from Spain to the Americas some five centuries earlier. Columbus is a figure that you don’t often find tangible evidence for to visit.

The other memory is of the large rambling statue in Las Palmas that has nothing but a lot of dogs on it, and therein lies a tale (tail?). We need to picture both canaries and dogs. Canaries are yellow finches from the Atlantic, native to the Canary Islands, and also the Portuguese islands of Madeira and the Azores. As for dogs, remember the word “canine” referring to them. It seems that historically, a lot of dogs were to be found on the Canary Islands, and, since the Latin word “canaria” means “of the dogs”, the islands were named after these dogs. Try this language trick: make believe the islands had been named the Canine Islands, and you’ll see the point more clearly. Then, the birds were named after the islands, and not at all the other way around. Try another trick: make believe the birds had been named after one of the other islands they come from—Madeira birds, or Azores birds. Then pop back to reality: they’re called canaries because they come from the Canaries, which are, essentially, the Dog Islands. Hence the statue, which was to dogs and not to birds.

1985b-Spain   Later that same year we did the most extensive tour of Spain we’ve ever done, all by car. I remember planning in advance the places we’d stop at and the hotels we’d stay at to do everything we’d want to do, totally to order. Those being before the days of Travelocity, Expedia, or Orbitz, I remember someone I know looking incredulously at me when I said we’d written 26 letters to Spain to make hotel reservations. Between June 26 and July 29 we drove in a huge spiral around Spain, ending in Madrid in the middle, and staying at 26 hotels, almost all, one night each. It was great. To us, made-to-order trips such as this are the only way to go. I’ll just mention four highlights.

In Reflections 2004 Series 13 I discussed visiting exclaves, and mentioned having gone to Llìvia, an exclave of Spain (actually, of Catalonia) in France, right across the border. (Llìvia is a Catalan name.) We crossed into France that very short distance into Llìvia, then back into France for a bit to enter Andorra from high on the French side, then back into Spain. Therefore, technically, I have crossed the Spanish/French border, but just in-and-out for local business, not to proceed on to the heart of Europe.

On this trip we also went to Galicia, to Santiago de Compostela. Since I’ll be there again in a couple of weeks, I’ll discuss it at that time.

The third item is not a highlight, but to me a lowlight. We felt compelled to go to Pamplona to see the running of the bulls. If you’re in Spain, and in the right area, during that time of the year, you have to experience it, right? Well, maybe.

It seems the origin of this was that, early in the morning before a bullfight that afternoon, a few bulls were brought in from the edge of town to the bullring for the San Fermín festival (Sanfermines), which runs from July 7-14. Normally, they’d be trucked in, but in Pamplona during this festival, the old tradition is maintained of bringing them in through the streets, presumably quietly at 8 AM, so as not to disturb anyone, to trot the 825 meters to the bullring. Obviously, with this custom, the tail has gotten to wag the dog. Supposedly, the afternoon bullfight each day of the festival is the big event. Bringing in the bulls for this event is the equivalent of delivering some boxes of sandwiches for the concession stand, but instead it’s become the center of the festival.

It’s called the encierro (en.THYE.rro) in Spanish, and the whole thing lasts two minutes, three tops. It apparently was just a local festival until Ernest Hemingway (that bigmouth) wrote about it, and now it’s world-famous, on a par with Rio’s Carnival and Munich’s Oktoberfest.

Here’s our experience. Drive into Pamplona late afternoon. Large crowds roaming streets, “celebrating”. Discarded plastic cups uniformly covering sidewalks and streets ankle-deep. Hotel has no record of reservation. But she has a room available for the one night at twice the rate. After dinner, go to bed early to get up early. Listen all night to crowd in park across the street “celebrating”. Bleary-eyed, find decent spot in morning near beginning of encierro, looking down over wall to roadway entering town from town gate. Watch group of idiots dressed in white with red neckerchiefs doing their arm-waving chant to the bulls just before 8 AM. Gates open. Idiots hot-foot it away. Half-dozen calm steers lead the way, then maybe eight bulls. Idiots continue running toward bullring. Over in two minutes. Go get breakfast, pack, and hightail it out of town, while watching service people scooping up yesterday’s ankle-deep plastic cups from street.

Do I sound cynical for a world-famous festival? We did it, but never again. I wish Hemingway had stayed home.

But the fourth memory is just the opposite, maybe the most thrilling memory I have of being in Spain. I have to start by making sure it’s clear the extent of the fame within Spain itself of Don Quijote. Shakespeare has Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, and others, Goethe has Faust, but the uniqueness of Don Quijote in Spain has no parallel. This is the prime character created by Miguel de Cervantes (ther.BAN.tes), 1547-1616, and is known and is popular everywhere in Spain even more profoundly than he is around the world. There is a statue of Don Quijote and Sancho Panza in Madrid, and elsewhere in Spain. A famous Picasso shows a black silhouette of the two on a white background. (They’re also on a ceramic tile in my kitchen!)

I should clarify some points. I’m using the standard Spanish spelling Quijote instead of the outdated English spelling with an X. Although in American Spanish it’s ki.HO.te, in Castilian Spanish it’s ki.KHO.te. Outside of the Spanish-speaking world, Don Quijote refers both to the character and the books, but within that world, a distinction is made. “Don Quijote” refers only to the character. If you mean the novels, you talk about The Quijote, or El Quijote. That’s the level of respect this work receives within this world.

Just as I took a course on Faust in the German Department at Queens College, I also took a course on El Quijote in its Spanish Department. We read only bits and pieces, because it’s very long. But I’d like to make a couple of points. First the time element, which can be confusing.

I’m going to use as an example the musical “Showboat”. We liked the revival a couple of years ago so well, we saw it twice. It was written in the 1920’s, and reflects back on river life back to after the Civil War, in the 1870’s. As the story moves forward over fifty years, the characters enter Modern Times, the women are dressed as flappers, and a period car is driven onto the stage for the finale. It has to be that way, even though the real Modern Times were seventy years later, you had to accept the Modern Times of the show in the 1920’s to have it make sense.

El Quijote was written in two parts, one in 1605, one in 1615. That’s the period that has to be accepted as Modern Times for the story to make sense, not today. So, when Don Quijote fantasizes that he’s in the early 1200’s, that he wants to be a knight with a squire and damsel in distress, the reader of today can’t confuse these two time periods. Both time periods are historic from our point of view, but in the Modern Times of 1600, someone acting like it’s 1200 or earlier appears really eccentric. The contemporary reader can’t confuse the two earlier centuries.

I only want to mention one anecdote that I liked, one where the reader has to know about an inside joke. When El Quijote I came out in 1605, it was an instant best seller. Everyone (who was literate) read it, and wanted more. Cervantes wasn’t up to writing any more, and modern copyrights weren’t in place, so other writers filled the gap, and wrote sequels of their own, usually of poor quality. Some referred to a character in a non-authorized sequel like this as a “Falso Don Quijote”. And Cervantes had no recourse. People were running away with what he had accomplished.

Then in 1615, the year before he died, Cervantes decided to write El Quijote II to complete the story and set the record straight, and he got just a bit of revenge. In one of many chapters, he has Don Quijote riding through the woods, where he spots someone suspicious. A Falso Don Quijote! And off he charges to do battle with the interloper. One has to know about those unauthorized sequels to get the point of this meeting in the woods.

Anyway, back to that fourth memory from 1985. We had made our first spiral driving around Spain, and were then in an internal spiral closing in on Madrid, and were headed for La Mancha. La Mancha is a very dry, brown area in south-central Spain. It’s part of the traditional Castilla. Spanish provinces are grouped into regions, and north of Madrid is Castilla-León and south of it is Castilla-La Mancha.

On this one day we were driving through La Mancha. It was very hot, and the car didn’t have air-conditioning, a situation that was more common then than now. We were headed toward the village of Consuegra, and Beverly was driving. Consuegra’s claim to fame, aside from its 12C castle, is having a ridge of restored windmills located above the town.

Traditional Spanish windmills look a bit different from traditional Dutch ones. The Dutch are taller, and wooden; the Spanish are squatter and more likely of stone. Most people seem to misunderstand about the four blades on either kind of windmill. They are open, like lattice work, yet people don’t seem to worry about how these open blades catch the wind to be able to turn. The answer is, they can’t. These blades are the skeletons over which custom-cut sails are pulled, like a glove over fingers. It’s the sails that catch the wind and make the mechanism turn; the blades just supply support.

Anyway, here we were in La Mancha headed toward Consuegra and its windmills up on the ridge, with me in the passenger seat dozing from the heat. Then Beverly said we’ll be there soon, as we wended our way around the hilly bends of the road.

Now, Don Quijote is fictional. He doesn’t exist. Also, the tilting-at-windmills episode makes no mention whatsoever of where it took place. And these windmills, although restored on historic foundations, are nevertheless just that, restorations.

But who cares? We were actually in La Mancha. We were about to see old Spanish windmills. So emotion trumps reality.

We came around the last bend and there, above Consuegra were 6-8 squat windmills, with blades, all with sails, slowly turning in the breeze. Maybe it was a bit of remaining sleepiness, but Beverly felt it too. You didn’t need Don Quijote around. Just by itself, it was a most inspirational sight.

Don Quijote’s lady is Dulcinea, full name Dulcinea del Toboso. El Toboso is where they met, and is one of the few actual place names mentioned in El Quijote. We also drove to El Toboso to see it.

Many names in El Quijote are specially chosen. “Dulce” means “sweet”, and is clearly the basis for Dulcinea (dul.THI.ne.a). Sancho Panza (PAN.tha) is short and squat. It should not surprise that “panza” means belly or paunch. And, as well as every kid used to know that the Lone Ranger’s horse was Silver, everyone in Spain knows Don Quijote’s horse is Rocinante (ro.thi.NAN.te). However, neither in the form rocín nor rocinante is it a flattering word, but instead tells the truth: it means “nag”.

Before leaving the subject, we need a quote. If, after the fact, the theme of 2005 turned out to be learning the Cyrillic alphabet, and it also turned out that the theme of 2006 was the Wordplays, the developing theme of 2007 is quoting famous authors in the original. I’ve come up with three possibilities in El Quijote. The beginning of the opening paragraph of El Quijote I is very well known; I decided to memorize it in the Quijote class:

This opening is almost as well-known as “once upon a time”. It goes on to describe Don Quijote’s appearance in detail, right in this very first paragraph. Since this sentence is rather complex, I would suggest shortening it:

I’ve searched the web, and have two more possibilities, both of which could apply to themes we talk about here. From El Quijote II, Chapter 16:

This is a very nice one, quite easy to learn, and very well known. Finally, from El Quijote II, Chapter 25:

I really like this one, too. It’s in somewhat simplistic language, but is the way Don Quijote tends to talk, often to Sancho. Every E is as in café, including ve (BE); lee is two syllables (LE.e).

1987-Portugal   We went back to Portugal after we both started studying Portuguese, since this time, we wanted to do it right. Flying into Lisbon, we connected immediately to a flight going back out over the Atlantic to Madeira. Back on the mainland, we drove clockwise around the entire country out of Lisbon. Again, just some highlights in my mind.

I remember driving past the cork trees in the south. There was this unbelievably bright orange area on the tree where the bark had been removed. You could see that they simply made a large vertical slit, then two circles around the tree, and the bark came off like peeling a pod away from around peas. Piles of the bark would be along the road, waiting for pickup.

We would keep on driving through numerous eucalyptus groves, and would stop, pick up a leaf to crush between the fingers for that so very distinctive smell, so much richer than from cough drops. Even if you didn’t crush a leaf, you could still sense the smell just driving along.

In connection with a certain maverick “Hurricane Vince” headed, unusually, toward Europe in 2005, I wrote a bit at the end of Reflections 2005 Series 15 mentioning our going out to the end of Cabo de São Vicente, where, ironically, Hurricane Vince was headed. Cape Saint Vincent is both the southwesternmost point of Portugal and of all Europe, and the view from the cliffs (75 meters/246 feet) out into the Atlantic is impressive, and memorable.

But mostly what I want to talk about is in the north, along the Douro (DOH.ru) River. At the end of the river is Portugal’s second city of Porto (or Oporto), and facing it across the river is its twin city of Vila Nova de Gaia, the home of all the port warehouses and cellars. We took a tour of the Vasconcelhos (vas.con.CE.lyoosh) Warehouse, were, as it turned out, the only ones on the tour, and had a tasting of four ports afterwards. But then we went inland up the Douro Valley and found a small, pleasant hotel in a town called Peso de Régua, where we told them we’d be staying three nights. The hotel being small, they spoke only Portuguese, but it isn’t hard asking for a double room for three nights, and our Portuguese was sufficient.

But it was hot. The heat is what grows the grapes so well in the valley, but this hotel wasn’t air-conditioned. That first night we lay with open windows spread-eagled on the beds, and by the second night, living like that “got old” very quickly. We decided to change hotels instead for the third night, and, as a matter of fact, ended up finding a nice, air-conditioned hotel with large swimming pool in Viseu. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

Not having slept well that second night in the small hotel, we got up early that Saturday morning to leave. On the way down to the empty lobby I figured what I’d say—in Portuguese—to tell the young man we’d have to be leaving and why, and it worked fine. However, walking out to the car, Beverly surprised me, because I’d apparently impressed her. She turned to me and said: “HOW DID YOU DO THAT!!” I didn’t think it was such a big deal that I’d been able to put a couple of simple sentences together in Portuguese, and was sure she could have done the same thing, but apparently not. In retrospect, I think it could have been that, after German, Spanish was my next language, then French, but for her, after German, French was her next language, then Spanish. And as I maintain, the similarities between Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese are such that I use Spanish as a basis, and build a layer of either Portuguese or Italian over it, sort of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I suppose French doesn’t work as well, since it’s just a bit more different from the other Italic languages. But Beverly redeemed herself later that morning at our destination.

There are two Portuguese rosé wines that are rather popular, although going in and out of fashion: Lancer’s, in its distinctive crock bottle, and Mateus, in its distinctive, squat clockface-shaped bottle. Mateus is, unfortunately, pronounced in English ma.TOOS, but in Portuguese, where it’s actually the name “Matthew”, Mateus is ma.TE.oosh (E as in café).

The Mateus bottle has a beautiful golden-beige drawing of a manor house, and we wanted to visit it, since it wasn’t far from the hotel we were just leaving. Driving through the countryside before long we came to the Mateus Manor House.

I still remember arriving at what looked like the bottle’s label, and seemingly parking near the front of the building on the label. It was Saturday morning, and few people were around. We asked at the desk about a tour of the house “em inglês”, but the answer came back “Não, só em português.” So we knew we’d have our work cut out for us. There was only one other couple, who were Portuguese, with us and the guide as we went through the Manor House, and I must say it went very well, and Beverly understood as much as I did. Now of course you see the difference—using a language passively like this is always easier than actively speaking, but it worked out fine. And anyway, if someone is pointing out a ceiling or a clock, it isn’t rocket science to try to follow what they’re saying about the ceiling—or clock. The building was 18C Baroque, and, as Beverly noted in her diary, it had beautiful wooden ceilings (I had forgotten). Afterwards we strolled in the formal gardens.

But all my memories about being at the Mateus Manor House are all tinted golden-beige, and I can still see us standing there, two tiny figures listening to Portuguese on the label of that squat little bottle.

1990-Málaga   Our next visit was in 1989, but that was to The Islands, and I want to leave that for last and finish discussing the Iberian mainland first, which was our 1990 visit to Málaga. (This name, and its wine, are often mispronounced in English. Stress the FIRST syllable MA.la.ga.)

We were nearing retirement (1991 Beverly, 1992 me). In 1971-1972 we had had our joint sabbatical (at half pay each), and we were looking for funding for a second, and final, major study session. We found a program at a private school in Málaga, in Andalusia near the southernmost point of Spain, called Malaca Instituto, Malaca being the ancient Latin name for Málaga. Their session was for four weeks, and we decided to take the advanced level twice in a row, since its activities would give us continuous practice over eight weeks June 29 to August 26. The turnover of teachers and students in the two sessions would also give us more variety of experience.

We had taken many international language courses, but they had all been three weeks long; some of these have been described recently: Spanish in Mexico City, Swedish in Göteborg/Gothenburg, French in Pau, German in Vienna, Russian in Unterweissenbach, Austria. The year’s German study in Mainz for our Middlebury MA in 1962-1963 had been our longest time abroad. Now these two months in Spain would be the second longest time we’d actually taken up residence in another country.

I got some sort of funding from my school district, and Beverly got something they had by then started calling a summer sabbatical from hers, and off we went. The school was about ten minutes east of town. The coast along there is very hilly, with one small gorge after another pointing inland, all built up. For the July session, the school arranged for us to rent a furnished apartment in a very comfortable, rather large, apartment building “one gorge east”. It even had its own swimming pool. Living here really gave the feeling of having your own home, including going out food shopping in the very modern supermarkets. But the commute, short as it was, especially with the morning traffic, made it more difficult living away.

But we didn’t have to make any decisions about changing residences, since the school had already planned for us to have a room on campus for the August session, so we got the best of both worlds. We avoided the commute, but also the splendid isolation of having our own apartment.

The school was really very good. There were periodic “salidas” or trips into town. I remember a special tour to the only Bacardí plant in Spain. And each semester, there was the picnic, so we did that twice. The bus would take us all about an hour’s drive away to a park, where there were grills for cooking. However, that there were grills was the only similarity to an American park with grills. Where Americans would be grilling hot dogs and hamburgers, here every family had their paella pan to make a nice big family paella (pa.E.lya), with rice, vegetables, pork, chicken, shellfish, and usually flavored with azafrán (a.tha.FRAN - saffron), the very expensive yellow spice made from the pollen of certain flowers. The school brought along a HUGE paella pan—about the size of a round dining-room table, and we watched our guy making it. When he opened up a packet and sprinkled something yellow into the mixture, I remembered either Beverly or me asking “¿Es azafrán?”, to which he muttered “No, es colorante.” Well, food coloring gives the same impression, I suppose.

Before the session started, we spent two nights in Costa Natura, the clothing-optional resort in nearby Estepona, and visited it once during the summer. We also drove down the coast to Algeciras (again), opposite Gibraltar, and took the hydrofoil across to Ceuta (THE-U.ta) the Spanish enclave across the Mediterranean, surrounded by Morocco. The distance wasn’t far, and the hydrofoil took maybe over an hour.

The school had a swimming pool squeezed in between a building and a fence at the sidewalk, and we’d often study and do homework in lounge chairs poolside in the building’s shade. However, the clearest memory I have here is the fig trees we were under, with the largest, juiciest figs you’d ever seen. The figs didn’t seem to be maintained, or harvested, and after a while, we decided to try one, breaking it open and eating the juicy inside. This became a frequent ritual, and we’d each down more figs per session than I’d care to admit.

There were evening functions, and a series of free evening classes on flamenco dancing. But unfortunately, although I maintain fond memories, this dance venture was doomed from the start. First, although we were both very good dancers, Flamenco steps are very intricate, and few in the class could catch on; after the first couple of classes, most dropped out. Also, it would have been hot work even if the room had been air-conditioned, which it most definitely was not. But I remember a graceful hand gesture that was just so impressive. Standing tall, you purse together all the fingers in your right hand and hold them down in front of you in the six-o’clock position. Then you describe a huge circle with that hand, all “around the clock” back to the six position. That’s graceful when just one person does it, but it’s meant to be done by partners facing each other, staring with fire into each other’s eyes (and hoping you don’t giggle). Do realize it that since you’re facing each other, you’re describing circles in opposite directions. It did look very nice, but don’t ask me to do any of the steps that followed. ¡Olé!

The weekends could have been deadly boring, but we figured out a great solution. We’d always been interested in the Spanish paradores. A Parador, literally a “stopping-off place” (from parar-to stop), is a series of inns and hotels run by the Spanish government since 1928. They are located in palaces, castles, monasteries and the like, although there are also a few modern ones. Actually, to my way of thinking, starting the parador system was an early example of sensible recycling of beautiful old buildings that had lost their original function. The paradores are great hotels, and have charming restaurants. Since 1942, Portugal has also run a similar system, but theirs are called pousadas.

Well, we had eight weekends, and each Sunday we’d drive off to a different parador within a couple of hours’ driving distance, look around the town, also nearby towns or points of interest, then have dinner early in the afternoon. We then almost always would move out into the garden, patio, or even a cloister, get ensconced in a comfortable chair, and take a nap in the shade after the big meal. The eight paradores we went to were in Antequera, Nerja, Torremolinos, Arcos de la Frontera, the Gibralfaro Parador in Málaga itself, a mountain parador up in the Sierra Nevada, Córdoba, and Granada. Particularly interesting was Córdoba, with its Jewish history, plus its famous mosque, which long ago had a church built into part of it, and Granada, where we revisited the Alhambra and Generalife palaces. Actually, that last weekend when we went to Granada worked out a little differently. Our usual day was Sunday, but that Sunday was the day to go home, so instead, we went to Granada on Saturday, August 25, which happened to be our 28th Anniversary, so it couldn’t have worked out better.

During the 1990’s, I looked back to our Málaga time wistfully. We let off on international travel once we got busy with setting up our retirement, then with selling our big house in Westchester and getting partially moved to Florida. Then, when Beverly was diagnosed with Pick’s Disease in 1995, I figured that Málaga was the end of it, and there’d be no more international travel. But we traveled more and more domestically, and by 2000 we took the plunge, wheelchair and all, and sailed back to Europe, Germany first. We then had five years of catching up on travel together, mostly European, so Málaga was no longer the “last time in Europe” that it had been for a decade.

1989-The Islands   Moving back a year now to 1989, before Málaga, this is the year when I put together one of the happiest trips I’d ever planned. It was one so unusual in what it combined that you’d never find standardized commercial tours combining land trips like this (although a cruise might combine these locations). I wanted to go to France, Italy, and Spain, but not to the mainland, to islands instead. We went to Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic islands of Mallorca and Ibiza. Since this was a trilingual adventure to three countries, I’ll make references in FRN, ITL, SPN, but in actuality, Catalan appeared more often than you’d imagine, so to some extent, there will be quatrilingual references, including CAT.

Corsica   Corsica is a beautiful, very mountainous, oval island. It is part of France, but one must be aware of the political situation. Ethnically and linguistically, Corsicans are Italian, and speak a dialect of Italian. We were aware at the time, and I suspect this is still true, that Frenchmen who built fancy vacation homes in Corsica might end up finding them dynamited. In a bookstore, I remember noting a book on how to speak “Corsican”. That, of course is not a language, but just a dialect of Italian. The insurgents might want an independent Corsica, or perhaps union with Italy. Just don’t imagine that this beautiful place is quite as French as the rest of France. Also note that all the place names are very Italian: the capital Ajaccio, Bonifacio, Calvi, Corte, Porto Vecchio, Bastia.

I just found a website in Italian that tells a bit about the situation of what it calls the twin islands of Corsica and Sardinia. Corsica had belonged to the Republic of Genoa who couldn’t afford to maintain it, so it tried selling it to Tuscany, who wasn’t interested. Only the French were interested in buying it, and it’s been French ever since. The website refers to the Italian dialects in Corsica and Sardinia being similar, which is not surprising.

In any case, here are the names: FRN Corse; ITL Corsica; SPN Córsega. You can see that in English we use the Italian, not the French name.

We drove all over the island, flying in to Ajaccio on the west coast and flying out from Bastia on the east. Napoléon was famously Corsican, and we toured his birth house in a back street in Ajaccio (pronounced in French a.zhak.SYO, in Italian a.YA.cho). He was born only a year after Corsica was transferred to France, and who we know as Napoléon Bonaparte was born as Napoleone di Buonaparte, the original version being much more Italian.

Driving down to the southern point of Bonifacio (FRN bo.ni.fa.SYO; ITL bo.ni.FA.cho), we took the one-hour car ferry crossing to Sardinia, described below. Of course, this route was carefully plotted out in advance, as always. On our return from Sardinia, we proceeded up the east coast of Corsica to adventures in the mountains, ending in Bastia. I remember returning the rental car, and the man asking me how many kilometers we had driven since Ajaccio. When I told him he was amazed and incredulous, not realizing that we’d also gone to Sardinia. I suppose that our type of travel isn’t that common. He understood when I smiled and reminded him there are “deux îles voisines (two neighboring islands)” here. We then made flight connections via Nice to the Balearics.

Sardinia   Do note that the Sardinia trip took place in the middle of the time in Corsica. Do you recognize the name of a fish in the name of this island? I hope so, because the island is famous for its sardine fishing, and the fish is named for the island. Here are the varieties of the name: FRN Sardaigne (sar.DEN.yuh); ITL Sardegna (sar.DE.nya); SPN Cerdeña (ther.DE.nya).

We made two hotel stops on the island. From the west coast hotel we drove to the town of Alghero to see a certain item of interest, but were very pleasantly surprised by the town itself, because we found out when we got there that here on this Italian-speaking island, Alghero formed a unique linguistic entity. The prime language in Alghero was something other than Italian, and I was amazed to find out exactly what.

Alghero is a Catalan-speaking town. As a matter of fact, it’s name is Álguer in Catalan, a fact posted everywhere. At this great distance from Spain and Catalonia, and from the Catalan-speaking Balearic Islands, this corner of northwestern Sardinia is a Catalan outpost. When I checked online the places that Catalan is spoken, it listed the obvious places, and then Alghero/Álguer. There was a large billboard in Catalan, facing west toward Catalonia and the Balearics. Catalan is similar enough to the other Italic languages that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the message started out something like “Greetings to our brothers across the sea!”

We drove past, but did not stop in, the famous Costa Smeralda/Emerald Coast, the posh resort area where famous international parties are held. When we reached Cala Gonone (cala means “cove” in both Spanish and Italian) on the east coast, we looked at the spectacular view down from the cliffs, and then went to our hotel. Our stay here was a very special experience, and very memorable.

We had, as usual, made all hotel reservations in advance. The ones in French and Spanish were easy, and we even managed to write to the two Sardinia hotels in Italian. Again, if you know a few fundamentals of a language, it’s not hard to ask for a double room on a certain date; it’s not like writing a novel. Michelin Italia didn’t list too many hotels on Sardinia, but this one looked charming. It was called l’Oasi (The Oasis). It had the two-roof symbol out of five-roof maximum, so it wouldn’t be too pretentious. Its writeup included the Michelin symbol indicating that it’s a quiet hotel, and the one indicating that there’s a view. Beyond that, all symbols were in red instead of black, the indication that the hotel is especially pleasant. The view was of the “mare e costa”, and also indicated in red was the “giardino fiorito a terrazze”. The hotel had 30 camare, and the rates included half-pension (breakfast and dinner). So, a smallish, 30-room hotel with view down over the sea and coast, plus a terraced flower garden seemed very promising. And it all was, in addition to a charming human element that we found.

We received a letter back, in Italian, indicating that it was unusual to make a reservation without a deposit, but that they would hold the room until 6 PM on the date of arrival. That didn’t seem odd to us, so everything was fine.

We looked over to Cala Gonone and l’Oasi 57 meters/187 feet above the sea, then drove in the front gate at about 5 PM and parked. The only people around was a woman who was very busy knitting, and a man walking up to us, greeting us in Italian. It was only at this point that I suddenly realized that our dabbling in Italian letter-writing, where you have time to think things out and look up words in a dictionary, was only the prelude to the Real Thing. Neither of us had ever actually conversed in Italian, and apparently Beverly wasn’t about to start trying, either. So it was in Sardinia, in Cala Gonone, at the Oasi, that I found myself for the first time ever in a position to sink or swim in a conversational situation in Italian. Well, especially when you consider I wasn’t expecting it, it worked out pretty well.

I understood him saying that he was glad we made it before 6 PM, as the woman continued to intensely study her knitting. His wife had thought he was foolish to do it—ahem—but he thought he’d give it a try. At this point I said my first conversational sentence in Italian, with a smile and raised index finger:

It was easier than you might imagine. Picture again the wolf (Spanish) in sheep’s clothing (a layer of Italian). What I was essentially saying was Spanish, shown paired here with the Italian:

Some of those are real (but minor) differences: yo/io, digo/dico, vengo/vengo, the Spanish being pronounced bengo. But two are exactly the same, just with different spellings: cuando/quando, que/che.

Remember, the languages are not the same, but in so many cases you can manage, because of a great deal of similarity. I fumbled a bit chatting during sign-in, and then we settled into our room.

But later I got suspicious, and in the evening, I went up to him at the front desk and asked:

This beautiful place was just far enough off the beaten path that I wondered how many Americans might have come there. I’d never heard before his one-word answer, but I learned that word on the spot:

It was obvious that he was telling me none, not a one. So look at that. We were the first Americans ever to show up here. Apparently our letter arriving from New York was so unique, that, even contrary to his wife’s “advice”, he decided to hold the room for us.

We drove around the area, and like it very much, but being at the Oasi was really the special experience of the visit.

The food was wonderful. But since it was a small place, after breakfast every day he would ask which of two choices for each course you’d want for dinner. I remember one choice in particular. I’m not sure what the first item really was, so I’ll make something up. He asked us if we wanted pasta Bolognese or pasta al limone. Well, we both knew that pasta Bolognese was with meat sauce, since it’s one of the most common offerings on Italian menus, so we both chose that. At which point he mischievously looked up at us from his pad. What’s the matter, don’t you want to try “una specialità della Sardegna?” Well, of course we did, so we changed our choice, but it’s odd that we had to be shamed into it, since we usually would try new things like that. Well, the pasta with lemon sauce was a great hit, and I remember it to this day. There’s a local restaurant here in Tribeca called Pepolino, and I know that the owner/chef is Sardinian. I’ve asked him to make me some pasta al limone off the menu a couple of times and it’s great. Recently, I found some recipes for it online. Some are more complex, including a lot of heavy cream, but that’s not what I want. Recently I merged a couple of simple recipes, and added my own touch. It’s a matter of whisking some lemon juice into about a half-cup of extra-virgin olive oil, and adding some oregano, salt and pepper (I also added some minced garlic). I also heated it in the microwave before drizzling it over some fresh-cooked pasta. I know there are more complex versions, and next time I have to use less lemon, but pasta al limone it was.

In our modern world, Google can help us find far-away things. L’Oasi now has a (modest) website, www.loasihotel.it, where you can select among several languages, although I doubt they actually speak them at the hotel. Click on “Hotel” for some views, but more importantly, click on “Our Family and Our Staff”, and you’ll see that that human element that made our stay in Cala Gonone so memorable is still there. The family name seems to be Carlesso. It was a joy to see the man on the website, who I now know is Renzo, with his wife, Carla. I recognize them even after 17 years. And at the bottom they show Maria, who they say has been their chef since 1980, nine years before our visit, so she is the same chef, still preparing pasta al limone, una specialità della Sardegna.

Balearic Islands   From Bastia, in Corsica, we connected in Nice for our flight to the Balearics: FRN Îles Baléares; SPN Islas Baleares; ITL Isole Baleari. Actually, although they are part of Spain, they are Catalan speaking: CAT Illes Balears.

There are four islands. I’ll give the preferable names first, although there are some alternate versions in English: Mallorca (Majorca), Menorca (Minorca), Ibiza, Formentera. If you think of the words “major” and “minor”, you’ll see how the two bigger islands got their names.

Formentera is small, its name is the same in all languages, and is governed along with Ibiza. Menorca appears as FRN Minorque, SPN & CAT Menorca, ITL Minorca.

Mallorca   On this 1989 trip we visited Mallorca and Ibiza, although we had been to Mallorca in 1965. The variations are: FRN Majorque; SPN Mallorca (ma.LYOR.ca); ITL Maiorca, CAT Mallorca.

The capital is the pleasant city of Palma, also called Palma de Mallorca. We drove around the island, including a stop at one of the well-known Mallorca pearl factories. Mallorca is famous for making imitation pearls that rival real ones. We took the factory tour—it was really interesting--and Beverly brought home a number of nice pieces of pearl jewelry.

Ibiza   As much as I liked Mallorca—after all, we went there twice--I really liked the laid-back style of Ibiza. It’s relaxed and beachy. It has the same name in all languages except the one spoken there, Catalan, where it’s Eivissa.

Although some visitors butcher the name, the Castilian pronunciation is a universal standard: i.BI.tha, both I’s as in SKI.

We went to the two official nude beaches in Ibiza, Es Cavallet and S’Aigua Blanca. Es Cavallet was large, busy, with rentable lounge chairs and umbrellas. OK, but not great. When we went to S’Aigua Blanca, we found the ideal place. It’s along the east coast, set down below some low cliffs, so you have to scramble from the parking lot down to the beach. The beach itself is narrow, busy but not crowded, and in the afternoon the cliffs behind you afford some welcome shade. I have some nice memories of S’Aigua Blanca.

I know no Catalan except for the names of these beaches, which have always intrigued me. We did see from the beginning the animal’s name in Es Cavallet. Can you tell?

Spanish-caballo; French-cheval. We’re talking about a horse here. Again, just as in roomette and kitchenette, this is a “horse-ette”. But only recently did I try to figure out the rest, and I’m surprised at what I found.

“The” in Italic languages usually includes an L: FRN le/la; SPN el/la ITL il/la. Catalan is like Spanish, with el/la.

But not in the Balearics. Only mainland Catalan uses el/la. In the Balearics they change instead to es/sa. I find that rather amazing, having an S where all the others have L. So Es Cavallet is “The Horse-ette”. In Spanish it would be El Caballito, although you never see that version in Ibiza. My final translation: it’s Little Horse Beach.

Just as la in the Italic languages always loses its A before vowels (ITL la + oasi = l’oasi), sa in this Balearic version of Catalan does the same thing: sa + aigua = s’aigua). Now there were in Ibiza signs in Spanish to this beach saying Agua Blanca, so I knew we were talking about white water, so S’Aigua Blanca (The White Water) could be translated as White Water Beach.

One closing comparison. For the umpteenth time I’ll mention the town in the south of France Aigues Mortes (“Dead Waters”). We’ve decided that aigue is Occitan (Provençal) for “water” rather than French, where it would be eau (OH), and the parallel is now apparent between OCC aigue and CAT aigua--to say nothing of SPN agua, PRT água, ITL acqua.