"Los partidos no podrán recibir subvenciones sin un certificado del Tribunal de Cuentas"

A Relaxing Cup of Café con Leche, blah, blah, blah......last week Ana Botella was all over the TV, radio and internet and everyone was making fun
of her for her terrible English. Yes her presentation was pathetic and laughable, but mostly because she didn't get a professional English Speech
Coach to help her write and prepare her presentation and correct her diction. Winging it on the world stage is just plain dumb, especially
considering what was riding on it and that they spent 220,000€ on the joke.

The thing that I find even more pathetic than Botella's performance is that the majority of those people laughing it up at her expense can't speak
English even as badly as she does and even if they do, their pronunciation is usually as pathetic or worse. People who live in Spanglish houses
shouldn't throw stones IMO.

This is never going to get any better because on a daily basis the English that people in Spain hear spoken here is mispronounced and
grammatically incorrect. The old rule of garbage in, garbage out applies, because this is the model that is then repeated and reinforced endlessly.
How can anyone learn proper English when everyone on radio and TV continuously badly mispronounces place names, proper names and song and
movie titles, or worse yet, translates the names of places and famous Royals from other countries? Nobody in the UK calls Juan Carlos King John
Charles, so why do the Spanish insist on calling Queen Elizabeth, Reina Isabel and Prince Charles Príncipe Carlos (or Carles in Catalan), or Prince
William, Príncipe Guillermo? Can't they say the word Queen? They have no problem when it's Freddy Mercury, so why not with the real Queen? And
how difficult is to say Prince, when they've been saying that word since that guy from Minnesota came on the scene in the 80's.
This all makes about as much sense as constantly calling New York, Nueva York or Fifth Avenue, la Quinta Avenida or the United States los
Estados Unidos and all the other translations of common place and proper names. Hispanics in NYC don't do it so why can't people here learn to
say the name of the places like they are in real life, especially since they need to learn English at least well enough to navigate in those places
when they visit there. What are they going to do? Stop some non-Hispanic New Yorker and say, "Excuse me, I am looking for la avenida doce,"
and expect to be understood. Maybe if their guide book and map and all the input they got all the time here in Spain used the English names they
might not have a problem and have to seek out Spanish speakers everywhere they go.
Nevertheless, we are still getting Misisipi and el Sur de Carolina, Jota Efe Ka (JFK airport) y other usages like that, despite their being totally
anachronistic given the global culture and the need to become fluent in real English. Along those lines there is also a particular peeve of mine, the
middle name turned into a last name. Every time I see or hear about someone called Luther King in the news I tell myself I'm going to write a letter
to La Vanguardia explaining why that is not the name of the person they think they are talking about. Luther King sounds like the name of a blues
singer or maybe a relative of Don King, the boxing empresario, but he certainly never got a Noble Prize. The same goes for Graham Bell and a few
other well-known figures in American and British history whose first middle names are mistakenly turned into last names all the time, thus creating
new, non-famous people.
So what is the solution? How about instead of all these endless articles about how bad the English level is here and continual statements to that
effect by the Generalitat and the Central government, they just do something to change it at the most basic level? For example, they can require
the news media to use the correct English place and personal names and require news readers on TV and radio to take pronunciation courses so
they get it right when having to read English on the air. At the very least all broadcasting stations should have a pronunciation guide to all the
foreign names that are in the news every day which their on-the-air staff are required to follow.
More importantly they need to end all government subsidies for the dubbing industry and put the money into correct subtitling in Castellano and
the other official languages in this country. Catalunya is really big on linguistic policies, so having policies about the correct use of English isn't any
more of an infringement on civil rights than requiring stores to have signs in Catalan or theatres to have films dubbed into Catalan. In fact it falls
under the domain of education because that is exactly where the failure in English learning is reinforced. They love to say that people can't read
subtitles. Gimme a big break! I've been reading subtitles all my life and it is not a skill that is any harder to learn than reading anything else. Or is
everybody here unable to walk and chew gum at the same time? So no more lame excuses about how people can't do it or don't like it. They don't
like to do it?? So what! They'll get used to it and may actually start understanding spoken English once they do.
I also think that as the Botella fiasco shows, fluency in English should be a prerequisite for National political service. People here applying for
secretarial jobs are required to be fluent in English, but there isn't any requirement for National leaders? WTF is that? They made a big thing in the
media about how service people in stores in the tourist areas couldn't attend foreign customers in English, and meanwhile Rajoy, Zapatero, and all
the other so-called leaders here wouldn't be able to form a simple English sentence together if someone was holding a gun to their heads. I heard
Maragall give a conference in English years ago and he incomprehensible, and perhaps worse than Aznar, which is to say on the level of Chiquito
de la Calzada.
On the other hand, if the government wants to start doing things that will help people master English so they can compete, it needs to stop
putting the job off onto the shoulders of underpaid teachers and over-extended family budgets. In other words, it needs to put its money where
its mouth constantly is so that real change takes place. That assumes, of course, that it wants Spain to move out of the backwaters of the world
where it seems to have gotten stuck and be destined to remain.

Los que no sepais inglés , podeis poner el traductor.