Another faintly ridiculous article from the LiC blog here, claiming that Carod Rovira is determined to destroy the Spanish language. The reason behind this claim is that the Generalitat have apparently invested €1m in helping the Ecuadorian government protect its indigenous languages and to promote bilingualism. You can find more information about this program from the dineib agency of the Ecuadorian education ministry.

In the comments on the blog (my tip is don’t bother leaving a comment: he’ll likely delete you or change your words), Mathew points out that this move has nothing to do with Carod Rovira or the president’s department of the Generalitat, providing the link I used earlier to dineib. Jeff/Steve/whoever it is that runs LiC’s response was priceless:

My dear Mathew, I do love your sense of humour. Far from being utterly ridiculous, the article was a direct translation from the noted newspaper ABC, I don’t know if you read the news in Spanish by the way.

Now, for those of you who are as yet unblessed by contact with the ABC newspaper, this would be something like a British blogger saying “Not my words, Mathew. The words of the Daily Express!”. OK so it’s not a perfect comparison (the ABC is far stuffier and more traditional than the Express) – but the point (that citing it as a reliable source on any story, let alone one concerning the Catalan government which it is duty bound to despise, is ridiculous and shows a complete lack of understanding of the subject), stands. And never mind the fact that the article was ‘a direct translation’ without citation.

He goes on:

Yours is a typical example comment from a “wannabee [sic] radical Catalan” and most people with a “sufficient level of intellectual cohesion in English” would poo poo your delirious ideals.You’ve spent far too long in this region my friend.

Now this is a particularly interesting method of attack coming from someone who has frequently used the riposte “Come back when you’ve lived here for ten years, then we’ll see” as his stock response to logical argument and accurate criticism. Incidentally, this “wannabee radical Catalan” line is eerily close to the email another commentator received from said ‘admin’ which included the memorable line “What are you? Some little Catalan loser who leaves snide remarks like Tom and Rab over people’s blogs because you can’t face the truth.” and went on to call him a “silly cunt”.

Add all this to the roll of honours LiC has already claimed (stating that the nivell C certificate is ‘the same’ as forced tattooing in Nazi death camps; deleting comments which attempted to correct him; posting fake comments; trolling this site; nicking content), and we can see that not only is LiC not a blog worth following, it’s not even worth criticising.

At least Iberian Notes had a brain. All LiC has is a bit of SEO, some clumsy, amateurish SEM and a dearth of decent content.