Vlog

Today's post is brought to you by the letters B and V.

I kinda dig linguistics. Not enough to be in any way proactive about it, of course. That would be work (or, in Spanish, trabajo. I think.) Just enough to think, "Huh" about certain things. Like, have you ever noticed how much the letters B and V sound alike? And how when you cross from one language to another, sometimes one replaces the other? Take the aforementioned trabajo. Does anyone out there know if it's related to our English word, travail? I'd be willing to bet a Snickers bar that it is. Marquioni, as the reader who knows the most about Spanish, can you tell me whether I'm onto something, or if I'm completely off my nut? I know I work at a textbook publisher and all, and I have access to books where this information would be readily available, but that would mean looking things up.

If I'm right, and B and V do occasionally do each other's trabajo, then I feel somewhat vindicated (or bindicated). In college, I had a classmate whose last name was Satava. But I had never seen it written; I'd only heard it said aloud. I once had to write it, asked about the spelling, and was told, "It's just like it sounds," upon which I spelled it Sataba and was laughed at. Meanies.

And am I alone in thinking that V is a cooler letter than B? I think that's why we have V for Vendetta and not B for Boo-Yah. Perhaps this is an issue for Sesame Street to tackle. Surely they'd find a way to address it while preserving B's self-esteem. Perhaps V is cooler, but that doesn't mean B is any less valuable. He's kind of cute, in a chubby, ticklish sort of way.