Do you remember in grade school the story about the Mexican volcano that rose overnight in a farmer's cornfield? That volcano is called Paricutín, and during its initial eruptions it destroyed the town of San Juan Parangaricutirimícuaro. The townspeople relocated and named their new community Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutirimícuaro, while the amazing story of the volcano brought some broad, but brief, attention to their tragedy and also to the astounding name of the town.
With the passing of time, the place name took on a mythical quality, and now many in Mexico doubt that Mexico's longest place name is authentic, although across the country people are amused by a famous tongue twister that evolved out of that name. I won't repeat the entire tongue twister here, but you can see different versions of it on the town's Spanish Wikipedia page. I've successfully used the tongue twister myself as a tool for teaching the language learning technique of the backward build-up: learning phrases by starting at the end and with lots of repetition gradually adding the preceding syllables, thus demonstrating that the technique works even with nonsense words.
Well, wouldn't you know that someone from that town eventually made it to Houston, and during a chance meeting and subsequent casual conversation about the both of us growing up on farms, he mentioned in passing the name of his hometown. Having myself come from near a place called Kalamazoo, I was also used to meeting people who didn't believe there really was such a place, and I had to confess to him that I too had doubted the name of his hometown. Still, we quickly got past that, I surprised him with my ability to recite the word without prompting, and I enjoyed our conversation far more than if I had just met a lady named Sue who really did sell seashells by the seashore.
I chalk this up as another example of my theory that there are wonderful unseen things --and people-- all around us. Take the time to find some of them and it just might make your day.
With the passing of time, the place name took on a mythical quality, and now many in Mexico doubt that Mexico's longest place name is authentic, although across the country people are amused by a famous tongue twister that evolved out of that name. I won't repeat the entire tongue twister here, but you can see different versions of it on the town's Spanish Wikipedia page. I've successfully used the tongue twister myself as a tool for teaching the language learning technique of the backward build-up: learning phrases by starting at the end and with lots of repetition gradually adding the preceding syllables, thus demonstrating that the technique works even with nonsense words.
Well, wouldn't you know that someone from that town eventually made it to Houston, and during a chance meeting and subsequent casual conversation about the both of us growing up on farms, he mentioned in passing the name of his hometown. Having myself come from near a place called Kalamazoo, I was also used to meeting people who didn't believe there really was such a place, and I had to confess to him that I too had doubted the name of his hometown. Still, we quickly got past that, I surprised him with my ability to recite the word without prompting, and I enjoyed our conversation far more than if I had just met a lady named Sue who really did sell seashells by the seashore.
I chalk this up as another example of my theory that there are wonderful unseen things --and people-- all around us. Take the time to find some of them and it just might make your day.
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