Top all-time · #25915
Spanish Linguist
Personal blog · spanishlinguist.uswritingculture
Spanish Linguist is a personal blog at spanishlinguist.us about writing and culture. Since 2015, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 3 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for posts on Spanish vowel pronunciation compared with English, and on the etymology of Spanish names such as Pepe and Paco, citing the Real Academia Española.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
a linguist writes about Spanish
What Hacker News says?
Spanish here. One of biggest differences is that spanish vowels always sound the same, that's why spelling contests aren't a thing here. It's pretty confusing at first, until you embrace the fact that there aren't shortcuts: you hear the word or you don't actually know how to pronounce it. See http://spanishlinguist.us/2013/04/spanish-vowels-vs-english-... for a comparison.
Comment linking /2013/04/spanish-vowels-vs-english-vowels/
on “English has been my pain for 15 years (2013)”> Two distinct languages might be mutually intelligible > It has been very conservative to Old Norse, possibly even more so than modern Icelandic. Interesting. Note that mutual intelligibility is not symmetrical. Yes, Icelandic is very similar to ON in writing, but in pronunciation it changed a lot. Not sure how close Elfdalian is to it. > Are you saying that French and Spanish speakers are "petty" for not naturally…
Comment linking /2013/05/the-lopsided-mutual-intelligibility-of-spanish-and-portuguese/
on “A small town in Sweden fights to preserve Elfdalian, a dying forest language”I'm way out of my depth, and it appears to be full of folk etymology. http://spanishlinguist.us/2013/03/pepe-and-paco-2-mysterious... says Real Academia España says Pepe comes from Beppe and there is no support for the "pater comunitatis" origin for Paco. There is much discussion in the comments.
Comment linking /2013/03/pepe-and-paco-2-mysterious-spanish-nicknames/
on “What Happened to Jai Alai? (2013)”