Let us be in no doubt that English is an important language, albeit that people these days are telling us that we should all be learning Cantonese. I am not sure exactly why, but it would seem that English is actually quite a trendy language when it comes to advertising, and we can find examples infiltrating posters, radio and TV adverts around the world. Only the other day I had a double take when on the Spanish radio station that I was listening to they announced “Stop flying, start Vueling” during an ad break. (Vueling is a Spanish airline whose name already derives from a half-English play on words – vuelo being the Spanish word for flight). Later the same day on the Spanish website of Adidas I noticed a t-shirt designed to support the Spanish national football team at the forthcoming Euro championships. The slogan? “España – All together”.

I wrote only the other day about a new Spanish gastronomy magazine called Clap & Wine, saying that I thought the choice of name was perhaps just a little ill-informed, or perhaps just badly researched – the moral being that you have to tread carefully when using a foreign language for your product or slogan.

A few years ago the French actually created new rules about the use of English infiltrating not only their language but also their airwaves. They were so upset about the number of English and American artists dominating their popular music stations that they actually moved to restrict the number of songs per hour that could be broadcast. This is quite apart from the English words quite commonly used in everyday life, such as ‘le weekend’ and ‘le parking’. So this problem is not unique to Spain.

Finally, on the subject of slogans, I have been trying to come up with something to promote our Bodega. My best effort so far is ‘What happens at Castro Martin, stays at Castro Martin’ – my only problem is that nothing ever happens!

Let us be in no doubt that English is an important language, albeit that people these days are telling us that we should all be learning Cantonese. I am not sure exactly why, but it would seem that English is actually quite a trendy language when it comes to advertising, and we can find examples infiltrating posters, radio and TV adverts around the world. Only the other day I had a double take when on the Spanish radio station that I was listening to they announced “Stop flying, start Vueling” during an ad break. (Vueling is a Spanish airline whose name already derives from a half-English play on words – vuelo being the Spanish word for flight). Later the same day on the Spanish website of Adidas I noticed a t-shirt designed to support the Spanish national football team at the forthcoming Euro championships. The slogan? “España – All together”.

I wrote only the other day about a new Spanish gastronomy magazine called Clap & Wine, saying that I thought the choice of name was perhaps just a little ill-informed, or perhaps just badly researched – the moral being that you have to tread carefully when using a foreign language for your product or slogan.

A few years ago the French actually created new rules about the use of English infiltrating not only their language but also their airwaves. They were so upset about the number of English and American artists dominating their popular music stations that they actually moved to restrict the number of songs per hour that could be broadcast. This is quite apart from the English words quite commonly used in everyday life, such as ‘le weekend’ and ‘le parking’. So this problem is not unique to Spain.

Finally, on the subject of slogans, I have been trying to come up with something to promote our Bodega. My best effort so far is ‘What happens at Castro Martin, stays at Castro Martin’ – my only problem is that nothing ever happens!