Blogueo, ergo sum

 

To blog or not to blog. Actually, that isn’t the question. I blog, therefore I am is more like it. It works in Spanish, too. Blogueo, luego existo. Blogueo? Well, there is a word for blog in castellano, sort of – bitácora, from cuaderno de bitácora, meaning log book (you know, “Cuaderno bitácora de Capitan Kirk, fecha estellar ….”), but that’s a whole three syllables longer and a whole lot less flexible than the ultra-economical, ultra-versatile blog. The only snag is that it ends in g and turns into a mangled ‘blogghh’ in the mouths of some speakers. You do get hard g’s in Spanish, but they are always followed by a, o or u; for example, gasolina, gorila, guitara. When followed by an e or an i, the g becomes soft and guttural, as in genio or gigante. Sticking one at the end of a word is just asking for trouble – pronounced according to Spanish spelling rules, dog and blog rhyme with the Scottish ‘loch’.

But that’s ok. Borrowed words from English are always knocked about a bit phonetically and grammatically to make them sound and look more Spanish. To make the verb ‘to blog’, you just add -ear. First we had zapear (to zap), then surfear, (to surf the Net), then chatear (to chat) and now bloguear (to bore everyone with whatever’s on your mind). You have to add the u, by the way, to make the g hard. From there, you get bloguero / bloguera (blogger), the gerund, blogueando, the past participle, blogueado, and just about any other part of speech you care to construct.

So, there you have it. Instead of letting Valerie (my good buddy and co-author of In the Garlic) battle in the blogósfera single-handedly, this reluctant bloguera has finally blogueado her way into existence.

Theresa O’Shea