Friday, June 15, 2007

A Linguistic Pet Peeve

Sportscasters are often in search of phrases that convey a sense of testosterone flung about with abandon. Somewhere along the way, someone thought it would be a good idea to appropriate a Spanish idiom that described hand to hand combat. Unfortunately, it appears that nobody who uses that particular phrase ever took high school Spanish.

Sportscasters of the US, please. It's mano a mano. Hand-to-hand.

Not "mano y mano." Hand-and-hand.

The former is suitable for the squared circle. The latter is suitable for a lovely walk in the park, which is, I suspect, not quite the image they are looking for. Just a hunch.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of one of the most annoying sportscasters ever... J.D. Hayworth -at a Fox-TV affiliate in Phoenix in the early 90's. In reporting baseball scores, for EVERY home run, he used the phrase "...dispatched one to the elements!" It got so it set my teeth on edge in anticipation. The solution, for many other reasons, was to avoid Fox. Hayworth later became one of Arizona's most horrible GOP Representatives in Congress, but was defeated in the last election, thank heavens. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.D._Hayworth