Independentista and blogger El Fem Fatal (update: her site is no longer live, how tragic!) speaks Catalan not only to foreigners like me, but also to the inanimate objects in her home.
“Li fas plas!” she explained to me, flailing at her lightswitch. “You’ve gotta really slap this fucker!” is how I would translate that. “Plas” is a Catalan onomatopeia for “smack”, and can be used to describe the treatment of intransigent electronics or people.
The pen name El Fem Fatal is, by the way, a pun; in Catalan it means “we do it all wrong” — and her blog is of course much more about delicious frustration than her own inevitable Catalonian charm). Fortunately for my education in this language, she is hyperverbal and the inanimate objects in her house are rather uncooperative.
I stayed with her for a few days, and made note every time she spoke to/of inanimate objects.
* This was recently adopted by Catalans in order to keep up with the Galicians, who have long had such a term. Tipsy Pilgrim, however, endorses the Galician version, fuch fuch, for all anglophone fingerbanging.
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