"Uno dos tres catorce" (Junk Spanish?)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 23:33:23 EST, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

>UNO DOS TRES CATORCE--3,860 Google hits, 23 Google Groups hits
>Bono's U2 counts "uno dos tres catorce" ("one two three fourteen") on
>"Vertigo." I don't know if this qualifies as "junk Spanish."

Here's some speculation about Bono's unorthodox count-off:

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http://www.accessatlanta.com/music/content/music/cds/1104/23u2bright.html

Internet denizens with too much time on their hands are burning up the
ether trying to figure out why U2's Bono shouts "Unos, Dos, Tres, Catorce"
at the start of the band's new single, "Vertigo." That's Spanish for One,
Two, Three, Fourteen. Well, actually it's not. "Unos" isn't one. "Uno" is.
So it's all very complicated.

But back to "catorce." Bono so far has stayed mum on this important topic,
so you'll have to content yourself with a few fan theories:

1. Bono doesn't know Spanish.

2. Bono does know Spanish and is just joking around.

3. Bono is paying homage to an old "Three's Company" episode in which Jack
Tripper says that very thing while testing a microphone. (Whether such an
episode exists, we don't know.)

4. Bono — known for his biblical references — is referencing John 1:14,
John 2:14, John 3:14. (Why these verses, exactly, is not so clear.)

5. Bono chose "catorce" because it's U2's 14th album. (Except it isn't.
It's generally considered the band's 11th full-length album. It could be
14 if you count live albums but not best-of's and other EPs.)
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>There are some genuine "junk Spanish" items that I expect to see in the
>digitized Los Angeles Times if that gets to about 1970 by the end of the
>year.

Jane Hill has a paper on "mock Spanish" in which she provides some
interesting historical material drawn from DARE and a 1949 AmSp article,
inter alia:

http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US8/SPAN/mockspan.html#history


--Ben Zimmer