Civil protection

Civil protection has a language of its own, precise because responsibilities live inside it. La emergencia is not yet la catástrofe, and between la alerta and la alarma lies the decision whether the public has to do anything. Halfway down the list is a word that sounds simple and is not. La sirena is the thing on the roof that sounds on the first Monday of the month — and it is also the woman with the fish tail. English keeps « siren » for the device and for the Greek singer on her rock, but the creature in the sea, the one in the stories with a tail, is « a mermaid », a word built out of « mere » and « maid » and related to neither. One Spanish noun, two English ones, and the split does not fall where a reader expects: English divided the myth, not the machine.