A strange phenomenon / Un fenómeno extraño

            In Spanish, there is no word for “procrastination”.

Usually, with the “-tion” words, one can just change the ending to “-ción”, throw a couple of extra letters in here and there, and voilà, you’ve got your Spanish translation. Sure, sometimes the translated word will not echo the original meaning perfectly, but at least you’ve produced a real-life Spanish word. I’ll show you some examples:

“nation” – “nación”

“position” – “posición”

“station” – “estación”

You get the gist.

Sometimes, like I said, the original word will mean something slightly different than the Spanish “equivalent” you end up with. Take every pyromaniac-pseudo-poet’s favorite:

“conflagration” – “conflagración”

While in English, the former is a nearly-unnecessary word that means a large fire (I’m pretty sure you can almost always say “fire” instead and sound like less of a turn-of-the-century British asshole), the latter Spanish version actually means an outbreak of war, an uprising, or a revolt. I actually like “conflagración” a lot more than “conflagration”, and I think from here on out, it should be used in a lot of really epic Spanish-language metal songs.

Inasmuch, no matter what you do to the word “procrastination” (one of my favorites in good ol’ English), nothing can turn it into Spanish. One would think a simple “-tion”/”-ción” switcharoo, giving us “procrastinación”, would do the job, but alas, we are left with an Anglicism - an orphan of a direct transliteration, a non-word that wants so badly to have its linguistic Gepetto turn it into a real boy. I mean word. Turn it into a real word.

So some people have been asking me in recent days, “Alex, why haven’t you updated your blog yet? What are you doing over there in Spain that is so goshdarned important that it precludes you from signing onto the internet and writing a ludicrously self-indulgent synopsis of your Iberian travails? You mean to tell me that dealing with epithet-shouting, paper-avión-throwing, other-person-starting-it-accusing, million-mile-an-hour-Spanish-speaking twelve-year old Castillian hellions is making you too tired to write a blog entry at night? You mean you want to just drink a 1.65€ bottle of wine and chill out instead of trying to think of something to write at night?

Well, I used to know the word for this phenomenon, but it seems to be escaping at the moment.