I was watching The Borgias on Showtime, and there was a scene in which the Spanish ambassador was telling the pope that if Spanish troops came to help defend the Vatican against the French, it would be tantamount to a declaration of war between Spain and France. But the thing is, he couldn’t say: “Spain”, he could only say: “Eh-Spain”, like, as in ‘España’. I remember this from taking Spanish classes in high school: the fact that people from Spain have trouble saying things like ‘school’ (‘e-school’), and ‘spell’ (‘e-spell’). Now, this got me to thinking; since Spain and England were rival powers for so long, could it be possible that the English intentionally named the country of Spain ‘Spain’ in the English language because they noticed that people from there had trouble pronouncing stuff like that due to the habits developed from speaking their own language? I mean, might they have done it to laugh at them behind their backs whenever they had to talk about diplomatic matters and such? I can imagine them saying afterwards: “Those stupid Spaniards: they can’t even pronounce their own country correctly!” I know this sounds like a joke, and perhaps even one in bad taste, but it’s really not. They were bitter rivals for many years, and the English are kind of like that, you know: enjoying making their adversaries appear silly (see: treatment of the French in Monty Python’s Flying Circus). Remember the joke in The Producers about the German playwright saying: “We weren’t Nyah-zis, we were Nazis! (like: Not’-seez)”? It’s kind of like that: Brits love to make fun of their adversaries, and if they could have figured out a way to actually make those adversaries inadvertently make fun of themselves, I think they would have jumped at the chance! So that’s my theory, anyway. (I hope I haven’t offended anyone. {At least not this time! Besides, didn’t the Spain basketball team do that offensive pulling-their-eyes-sideways-to-look-like-Asians thing and then refuse to apologize to the politically-correct crowd at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing? Yes, actually, they did. And I’ll give you a link to the picture to prove it!})
Here’s the link that proves Spain deserved the practical joke England played on them:
