What to call it - El Camino or The Way?

[BrendanB]

Hi everyone,

I am new to the forum and was wondering what do you refer to the Camino as?

El Camino or The Way?

I have heard from people in Santiago that a lot of people from the States and England refer to it as The Way while most europeans refer to it as El Camino.

Can anyone help a fellow pilgrim out with this question??

Many thanks and Buen Camino!!

 

[C clearly]

When speaking English, most of us serial (repeat) pilgrims refer to "the Camino." Please do not say "the El Camino" which means "the the camino."

 

[Kanga]

@BrendanB I don't think it matters. I usually call it "the Camino". As there are so many different caminos referred to on this forum it is sometimes useful to use specific titles - the Camino Francés is probably the path you mean, but there is also the Camino del Norte, the Via de la Plata and many more. Old hands on the forum abbreviate these to CF, CN, VdlP etc.

 

[Anemone del Camino]

And the one that confuses me is the use of the CP: do people mean Potugues or Primitivo?

 

[Anniesantiago]

When speaking English, most of us serial (repeat) pilgrims refer to "the Camino." Please do not say "the El Camino" which means "the the camino."

Quadruple like!

 

[trecile]

I found that people used both phrases interchangeably, but I mostly heard and used "the Camino."

 

[SYates]

Before the movie the expression "The Way" was hardly ever heard, we just called it the Camino in its short form and Camino Francés etc when we needed to clarify which pilgrimage route we were speaking about. Buen Camino, SY

 

[Silverton]

I think people in the US often say 'I was on camino'--without the the. That somehow grates with me. Contrarily, in the US one goes 'to the hospital', and in Ireland one goes 'to hospital'. Specific/generic ... or just the quirks of language usage?

 

[Bogong]

Well.

My execrable Spnish tells me that "caminar" is the verb "to walk". So camino as a verb would mean I walk or use me camino to emphasise the " I". (Mi maestro, donde esta?)

As a noun, camino is simply "walk" and the walk would be "el camino".

It also means "way", hence the way of St James.

But I much prefer the Spanish terminology. If I told my wife I was travelling to Europe to do it the French way......

De Colores

Bogong

 

[SYates]

Also important to note that a sign simply stating "Camino" doesn't necessarily point to the Camino de Santiago, sometimes just a local way is meant. BC SY

 

[Pingüigrino]

Hi. In plain spanish, when you say "el camino" you are speaking about any camino. ( El camino a mi casa : My house´s way) But when concerning about the pilgrimage caminos to Santiago de Compostela, (Mainly el Camino Frances ) you write "el Camino", with capital "C".

 

[Smallest_Sparrow]

I've never heard (in person) an American refer to the Camino as the Way, but my experience is limited. I used 'el Camino de Santiago" in most of Spain (especially since I walked routes where 'The Camino' is not the primary employer, 'cami st jaume' in a small part. I wonder if those who put 'the' in front of 'el' come from the US west and southwest. Spanish words and names have become incorporated into use and place names, so you might get off the freeway at the 'las pilitas' or ''las mariposas" off ramp (double the), walk the El Camino Real between the missions, or look for the El Camino market (more double 'the's), or my favorite, drive or bike ride the steep hairpin curves of the nearby Cuesta grade (grade grade). For them, 'the El Camino de Santiago' could be from a lifetime of english-spanish double 'the'. Something similar is when people talk about the Al Mansur hotel (double the) or the Al Andalus train (double the).

edit: don't ask me how this happens, as children (in California at least) are usually taught Spanish in grade school and in some places English speaking is less common than Spanish...probably a holdover from the days when this was not the case

 

[jerbear]

All those who wander are not lost! Tomato tomato. Camino is used quite often in the spainish. As i trudge the path i understand more of the way. All will be revealed in its time. Go....walk. Peace. Buen camino

 

[Seabird]

As others have said, I too typically say "the Camino," elaborating as necessary to include "de Santiago" or "Frances."

 

[mcopeland]

On our Camino some non-English speakers would greet us with "Good Way" instead of Buen camino. I was confused at first!

 

[jmcarp]

I would guess that most people in America would not know what it means when you say "The Way" (with or without capital letters). Their response would probably be, "Which way," or "the way to what." In my observation, it has only been since the release of the movie "The Way" that most of my fellow countrymen--Catholics excluded--have even been aware of this thing we call the Camino de Santiago, much less the shorthand title, the Camino. Even for those Americans who speak Spanish as a first or second language, the word "camino" is generally understood to mean "road." There are several places in the American southwest that have road or street names that use "Camino" in lieu of "Street" in their names, as in Camino Real, Camino Vista, or Camino del Sol. And even among American Catholics, there seems to have been relatively low awareness of the Camino as a pilgrimage route in Spain. I'm not sure how I, a convert to the Catholic faith, knew about it, but I had at least some rudimentary awareness of it through second- or third-hand anecdotes about a friend of a friend or someone's second cousin who had made the pilgrimage. For example, my wife, a life-long practicing Catholic, had not heard of it until we saw the Sheen movie. But getting back to the OP's original question, my probably prejudiced view is that when someone gets interested enough in walking "our" Camino to start inquiring on forums such as this, using "The Way" or even "The Way of St James" immediately identifies that person as a newbie. I don't mean that in a derogatory sense, but only as someone new to the Camino world of internet forums, confraternity groups, and Camino-related social media. I know that this is probably not true, as @Kathar1na has noted, in other non-English speaking countries, but that seems to be the case at least here in North America.

 

[Smallest_Sparrow]

Here's a thread from pre-The Way, on how people heard about the camino
https://www.caminodesantiago.me/com...n-and-how-did-you-hear-about-the-camino.1556/
for anyone interested

 

[Jeff Crawley]

Actually, most Europeans refer to it as Jakobsweg, chemin de St Jacques, Jacobsweg, ..... .

Among English speakers, I have the impression that "way of St James" is being replaced by "camino" and "way", capitalized or not. For some reason, "El Camino" strikes me as an Americanism but it could also be that it is a direct transfer into English by (native) Spanish speakers.

I agree with others, "the El Camino" grates in the ear.

Caveat: The expresssion "Americanism" is used in the meaning of "a characteristic feature of American English especially as contrasted with British English".

Speaking of tautologies - no such thing as "British English" it's just English. Just as "French French" is just French as opposed to Joual and "German German" is just German as opposed to Schweizerdeutsch . . . . just sayin'

 

[Smallest_Sparrow]

"British English" it's just English

except I spent eight days on safari with four campers from England and two from Australia. Thank goodness for the Australians, they had to translate for the rest of us

 

[Jeff Crawley]

except I spent eight days on safari with four campers from England and two from Australia. Thank goodness for the Australians, they had to translate for the rest of us

Ah, that's because Americans and Australians share a common linguistic root - handed down from your 17th century convict forefathers

Back in the 1970's I was an engineer on a housing division construction site in Canada. The crews working the north end of the site were all of Ukrainian or Finnish stock whilst those in the south were Italian/Spanish/South American.

The senior engineer was Welsh. He'd issue instructions and, once he'd left the room the two supervisiors would turn to me and ask me to translate. Similarly Keith (the engineer) would be told something by one of the supervisors and ask me what the guy meant . . .

As George Bernard Shaw said "two nations separated by a common language"

 

[Smallest_Sparrow]

Ah, that's because Americans and Australians share a common linguistic root - handed down from your 17th century convict forefathers

I'm imaging you saying this in a way cool British accent, like Hugh Grant or someone, so I'm OK with it.

 

[Bogong]

except I spent eight days on safari with four campers from England and two from Australia. Thank goodness for the Australians, they had to translate for the rest of us

I was corrected on this once. I was told that it's "The Queen's English" and that the Queen is the only person in the entire world who speaks English without an accent, as she owns the language.

I worked with a lovely bloke years ago who was fiercely proud of his Scottish heritage, and despite 30 years in Australia, had doggedly retained his accent. It was a mystery to us. Then one day a visiting delegation frm Scotland arrived, and to make them feel welcome we nominated John as escort officer. They couldn't understand a word he said!

De Colores

Bogong

 

[Smallest_Sparrow]

my mother's family came to America before the Iron Curtain fell. When things were less tense (decades later) they returned, only to find none of their relatives could understand a word they said. A lot changes in how we speak in 40 or so years.

and I'm OK with the Queen owning the language, as long as she doesn't mind the improvements we've made, free of charge
I'm just happy the Canadians know how to speak English, eh?

edit: except of course those who speak French, and everyone loves a French accent so who cares

 

[jmcarp]

my mother's family came to America before the Iron Curtain fell. When things were less tense (decades later) they returned, only to find none of their relatives could understand a word they said. A lot changes in how we speak in 40 or so years.

and I'm OK with the Queen owning the language, as long as she doesn't mind the improvements we've made, free of charge
I'm just happy the Canadians know how to speak English, eh?

edit: except of course those who speak French, and everyone loves a French accent so who cares

To further expand on this comment, I'm originally from Texas, and throughout that state there are many small towns that were settled by various European immigrants in the mid- to late-19th century. To this day there are German towns, Czech towns, Polish towns, etc, scattered all along a single highway, and up until the last generation or so, it was common to hear the language of the old country spoken in normal conversation around these towns. As a child growing up in the 1950s, I remember going to reunions of my German grandmother's family, and all the old folks there were speaking German. One such town, New Braunfels, Texas, was settled by Germans and when they celebrated the town's centennial they decided to invite dignitaries from the town in Germany from whence the original settlers came. Just as @Smallest_Sparrow noted, the 'American' Germans and the Germans from Germany could barely understand each other.

 

[Smallest_Sparrow]

with over a year in San Antonio, and some time in Houston, Austin, and Killeen, I cannot help but smile when someone says New Braunfels.

 

[Jeff Crawley]

I'm imaging you saying this in a way cool British accent, like Hugh Grant or someone, so I'm OK with it.

Actually I was just feeling mischievious - although born and raised in England my family roots are Irish, my grandfather appears to have arisen from a bog near the city of Cork in the 1880's as there's no trace before then!

 

[jmcarp]

... my grandfather appears to have arisen from a bog near the city of Cork in the 1880's as there's no trace before then!

This is getting way off topic, but it reminds me of something I read several years ago about a mummified body being found in a peat bog somewhere in England (I may be wrong about the exact location). Archeologists dated the remains as being something like 8000 years old. They asked for voluntary DNA samples from people in the surrounding area, and matched one person who lived within a half-mile of the bog. That's what I call staying close to home.

 

[BrendanB]

Love the replies from everyone who took the time to contribute to the thread.

One of the great things about Pilgrims is how accommodating and friendly they are!!