CADIZ AND ITS LANGUAGE

Karine has long been proud to call herself a "guiri". Proud to shout it on the fly. She got the word from a gaditano in Puerta de Tierra, the new town. And if Karine was proud at first, it's because she heard the word the way she wanted to be seen: as [...].

What does that word mean? There are several theories, some more far-fetched than others. Let’s look at two of them. Hypothesis 1: In the 19th century, a French family lived in Cádiz—the Sicourt sisters, dressed in Parisian fashion; a bit snobbish, too prim, and quickly becoming a laughingstock. Teasing them, the locals called out: “Si-Cur- Si-Cur Si-Cur-Si- Cur-Si…Cursi.” A metathesis for the

On this strip of land squatted by Cadiz, you're almost always a foreigner. An extranjero. And the word is hard to pronounce for anyone who doesn't speak the language, with its jota (j) separated by just one vowel from the rolled /r/. A jota, the spitting image of Spanish, that you learn to pronounce as soon as you hear it.