Tuesday, September 11, 2007


squat: casa tomada (o edificio tomado) (or okupa in Spain - see also entry for squatters)

I saw this term used in this semana article on Tanja and liked it. How word geeky is that? Major soap opera about a Dutch woman joining the FARC, and I focus on the word they use for squat. I've been using 'invasion', but I think that gets associated with larger land takeovers, and usually if squat is being used in English, in the North American and European context we're talking about a single house or a building. Interestingly la casa tomada is the title of a famous Cortazar story, but in that case the house is taken over by ghosts. It certainly doesn't get translated into English as the squat, but usually as the House Taken Over. Can ghosts squat?