Los Rah-MO-nays!

Spanish pronunciation of English words can create problems for the English speaker living in Spain. The other day a Spanish friend, Rafa, passed along some new music to me. When I told Rafa I thought the group had a touch of the Ramones to it, he looked baffled, like he’d never heard of the Ramones. This was, well, baffling. Rafa is a rock-and-roll enthusiast, and a drummer to boot: surely he knows about the Ramones.

I tried again. “The Ramones.”

Nothing.

I laid down an up-tempo 4/4 beat on my knees, sang, “Hey! Ho! Let’s go! Hey! Ho! Let’s go!”

Rafa lit up. “Los Rah-MO-nays!”

“Los Rah-MO-nays?”

“Los Rah-MO-nays! Joey, Dee Dee, Johnny!” He picked up “Blitzkrieg Bop” where I’d left off. So we understood each other after all. Without music to back us up, though, we might not have.

Later it would occur to me that since “Ramone” comes from the Spanish “Ramón” in the first place, a group of kids named Ramón might properly be called “Rah-MO-nays,” but at the time I just wanted to know where Rafa had found the music that had a touch of the Rah-MO-nays. He said he’d gotten it free, from something called “Ey-MOO-lay.” Ey-MOO-lay? What was that? Rafa looked disappointed in me. How could I not know about Ey-MOO-lay? Where did I get my music? Did I actually pay for it? Why did I not just go to Ey-MOO-lay and download it? I said because I didn’t know anything about Ey-MOO-lay. Flustered, he started to describe the Ey-MOO-lay icon, which description I understood as un asno sonrientre, a smiling donkey. A smiling donkey. Let’s see…smiling donkey, laughing horse, cheerful ass, jovial mule—wait…

“E-mule?” I said.

“¿Cómo?” Rafa shook his head. “No no no. Ey-MOO-lay.” Exasperated, he called for a pen from the barman, scribbled on a napkin and held the napkin up. The napkin read, “eMule.”

“E-mule,” I said.

“Ey-MOO-lay,” Rafa said.

“Or Ey-MOO-lay.”

That settled, we ordered another round and moved on. For the better part of the afternoon we talked music. Now and again one of us thought the other had brought up a new group or even a whole new genre, but no, we just came from different languages. In Spanish, grunge is groonj. Mudhoney is Mood-ho-nay, U2 is Ooh-Dos, 50 Cent is Cincuenta Cent. Punk is pahnk. AC/DC is Ah-say Day-say, and R.E.M. is Rem. The effect known as “fade” is fah-day.

Incidentally, in Spain a bass drum is called a bombo, for the sound it makes. A pregnant woman’s belly can also be called a bombo, for the silhouette the baby-belly gives her: in profile, a pregnant woman could be a bass drummer in a marching band. Or a lower-case “b.”

bombo bombo bombo

Video: The Ramones Live in London, ’77

________________________________________________

Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.

Today’s news tells of Alice Munroe’s winning the Man Booker Prize, Gary Snyder deciding that he can go home again, Tobias Wolff and other short story writers describing the brotherly experience, charges of sexism in Oxford’s poetry realm, and a new novel by Lisa See called the Shanghai Girls, about Chinese immigrants entering the United States circa World War II.

(more…)