English Anyone?

When Sarah and I first returned back to Barcelona for our second take, we were taken by a song that we were hearing in every bar, restaurant and café and blasting from all the passing cars.  It has a really nice beat box sound and trumpets that resound of a French circus.  It was a bit tricky to figure out the lyrics as there aren’t many, and frankly, who can hear anything over Spaniards in a tapas bar.  Eventually, I heard something saying Americano while it was playing in the bus on the way to school.  Hmm.  As every other song is American, I was curious.  Fortunately, another ex-pat also heard, however incorrectly, Pa Pa Americano, and it gave me the root to the question.  The song is called We no Speak Americano.  It is an old Italian song from 1956.  Cannot say what Americano versus English could mean, but this was definitely before Bush.

Timely that it comes back as I am in Europe and am finding little resistance to America, let alone English.  Maybe it is a hark back to the Franco days when he resisted anyone’s use of Catalan or Basque or anything other than Castellano.  But now, he is gone and there are still blatant mistranslations.  Maybe it is part of the larger plot to confuse the world issues and keep the peeps from learning proper English.  Because I am pretty sure that Spanish companies, like Desigual, have had ample opportunity to hire well-educated Anglos, but are steadfastly determined to continue littering their clothing with poor grammar and misnomers in order to keep it real.  Sad part is my skirt with: Whay?  There is not one answer.  Working all together is more easy was sewn by a poor little Indian kid that likely speaks proper English, but was ignored.