Yperita My hefty (dead-tree) Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana has only one word with Y – yperita (the y is pronounced ‘ee’)  It doesn’t even have its own page, but is lumped together with Z. So I could simply miss Y out, especially as I’ve already overshot the ‘official’ April A to Z Blogging 26-day schedule based on the English alphabet. But I’m also a bit obsessive, so…  yperita is the chemical agent iperite, aka

Xiuxiueig Did you freak out when you saw this word? People tend to when they see a piece of text in Catalan because of the liberal sprinkling of ‘x’ s,  and they tune out thinking that it’s a weird and unpronounceable mish-mash. In fact xiuxiueig is one of Catalan’s most lovely onomatopoeic words. Repeat after me: sheeoo-sheeoo-WEDGE. It means whispering. From the verb xiuxiuejar – sheeoo-sheeoo-wedg-A – to whisper. The letter x may represent three

W is not really a ‘native’ letter in Catalan. The only words in the W section of the dictionary are those of foreign origin, from wagnerià through waterpolo and watt to whisky to wulfenita and wurtzita. I misread this last one as wurstita and, thinking it was some kind of sausage, I checked it out (I do love research).  In fact wurtzite is a mineral, first described in 1861 for an occurrence in a mine