Saturday typos, 14 June 2014

On page 89 of the Essentials of Transportation and Public Utilities Law, 2011 Edition by Aquino and Hernando:

Should be Codigo Civil and sin ora.

A Smile Certain

Why would the Civil Code of the Philippines use price certain instead of certain price as in the following article?

This article, according to Paras, was taken from Article 1445 of the Spanish Civil Code. Very well then, let's look at the  the Spanish Civil Code which can be downloaded here.

Article 1445:

Or read the article in context from the web here. 

This is the current version of the Spanish Civil Code:

Download here.

Here's the modern rendering of the Article:

Article 1,445. Pursuant to the contract of sale and purchase, one of the contracting parties undertakes to deliver a specific thing and the other to pay a certain price for it, in money or something which represents it. 

So why price certain? Most probably because the people who were tasked to create a civil code for the Philippines were steeped in the Codigo Civil and perhaps more conversant in Español than in English. Like my grandpa who was wont to exclaim puñeta instead of sonafabitch what the fxxx.

(I hope my e-friend [meaning electronic friend through the internet]  Dean Jorge can verify if his father Dr. Bocobo  who was chairman of the Civil Code Committee was more comfortable in Español than in English.)

Here's the article in Español:

Artículo 1445. Por el contrato de compra y venta uno de los contratantes se obliga a entregar una cosa determinada y el otro a pagar por ella un precio cierto, en dinero o signo que lo represente.

In Spanish the adjective comes mostly after the noun. Hence for precio cierto the Civil Code Committee came up with price certain.

Oh, yes. The title of the post is from this song. And I'm more familiar with English than Spanish hence the inversion.