Our everyday language is cluttered with some really funny things if you look for them. Being a Los Angeles native, I grew up with English being mixed with Spanish because many of the place names in the LA area are Spanish words including the name of our lovely city. Los Angeles means the angels in Spanish. Now, when the Anaheim Angels returned back to their original name, the Los Angeles Angels, they were asking us all to call them the the angels angels (if you want it all in English) or los los angeles angeles (if you want it all in Spanish).
Good grief. Same thing goes for the La Brea Tarpits which translates into the the tarpits tarpits. And a cheese quesadilla translates into a cheese, cheesy-thing. Duh. It isn’t just Spanish. Sahara is Arabic for desert and pilaf means rice in Turkish so…having rice pilaf in the Sahara desert is meaningful, but a little redundant.
Beware of mixing languages. Or rather, enjoy the mixing of languages.
Tags: mixed languages, redundancy
