magical roney writes:
> Since English lacks a direct translation for Spanish's "ojal?", one
> could instead just use "god willing" (or "luck willing", if you're
> allergic to god), in lieu of "hopefully". Same number of syllables,
> even.
If my Spanish teacher was correct in the '60, 'ojala' was a leftover
>from the Moorish occupation and was a corruption of 'o, allah'. So
`god willing' is a pretty good replacement.
But it's also worth remembering that the Spanish tend to be Catholic,
so when saying 'ojala,' they tend to ignore (or be ignorant of) the
original meaning. That's not too dissimilar to a non-Christian
being comfortable saying 'goodbye' (from 'God be with ye', I believe).
Damn, this discussion makes me wish I had a good entymological
dictionary.
--
"Deconstruction is [when] a work is interpreted as a statement about itself,
using a literary version of the same cheap trick that Kurt Godel used to try
to frighten mathematicians back in the thirties." -- Chip Morningstar
in <http://www.dourish.com/goodies/decon.html>