So here's a linguistic conundrum, nailed to a palm tree on my way home (for the record, the house, fence, vegetation add up to a very, very typical commuting view for me). Cuca, in Spanish, is a decidedly rude word - denoting women's genitalia - and probably not what you'd expect to see exterminated (though one never knows). But that upside down brown beetle, waving its legs in the air - that's definitely a cockroach. So - No More Cucarachas. Cucarachas is, after all, a long word to fit on a little placard. But is it a deliberate pun? And do cockroaches, internationally, attract vulgar punning? After all, in Bahasa Indonesia - the only word I can remember in Indonesian - "cockroach" is "likas". Don't even get me going on how I know that: it involved my bag, in which there were some rice cakes - and, well, cockroaches notoriously don't come singly, do they?
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