"Oso Flaco Lake"

If only you could have gotten a duck in the picture with you, you would have pulled off the hat trick.

all I can say is AWESOME!!!

Haha, sweet!!

Haha. I can hardly believe it. Wow.

I hate to do this, but I must; Oso Flaco actually means "skinny bear". Oso = Bear. Flaco = Skinny. Dave, you don't even know the meaning of one of YOUR very own character's name. Shame on you. You have lost almost all respect in my eyes. "Sheldon" is your only life line.

On a seperate note, Nipomo? Did Hawaiian indians take a boat and settle there?

Haha. I can't believe it. Wow.

I hate to do this, Dave, but I must. *sigh*. "Oso Flaco" means "skinny bear. Oso = Bear (ok, well, you know that), and Flaco = Skinny. If Flaco had been named "delgado", you would've been correct. You don't even know the meaning of one of YOUR very own character. You've lost nearly all respect in my eyes. "Sheldon" is your only life line.

On a seperate note, Nipomo?! Did Hawaiian indians take a boat and settle there?

This is why the world need Arthur dolls tout de suite!

I of course looked up as much info on Oso Flaco Lake as I could.

Oso Flaco Lake is in the Guadalupe-Nipome Dunes outside of San Fransisco. Apperantly the only way to get to it? Why go down Oso Flaco Road! *lol* There's apperantly 2 Lakes. Little Oso Flaco and Oso Flaco. It's a 75 acre wetlands reserve that has a boardwalk you can walk on. Way kewl. Definatly gonna have to visit it someday.

Oso Flaco is also where they filmed a Ten Commandments movie in 1923! And apperantly there are still remnants of the set in the area that Archaeologists have been digging up for several years.

I also found out the reason behind the name. Bit of a scary story:

"The lake has been called Oso Flaco - which means 'skinny bear' eversince 1769 when Portola's expedition passed through. The reason for this can be attributed to a fateful meal shared by the explorers. The group saw, shot and subsequent ate, a skinny bear they had seen on the shores of the lake. When the men awoke in the morning - two of them didn't, they were dead! The tale's bizarre ending seems to have been a result of the Chumash who had adopted a clever way of dealing with rogue wildlife. Their practice was to hang tainted meat which when consumed would cause the animals to sicken enough for them to be unable to hunt. With the inabilty to feed came the inevitable wasting that would have led to our 'skinny bear'. It would appear though that the bear's flesh had enough residual toxins to have also dispatched our ill fated explorers to a quicker demise."

Oh and Nipomo stems from the Native American (Chumash to be exact) word Nipomah which means Foot Of the Hill.

Here's a couple sites I found on it:
http://santalucia.sierraclub.org/osoflaco.html

(where I found out about the movie) http://www.beachcalifornia.com/oso.html

(Where I found the history) http://www.dunescenter.org/ottoso.htm

(this one has piccies!) http://www.end.com/~jynx/travel/cadec/oso.html

(Niiiice pics of the Lake and surrounding dunes..Oh look..ducks! *L*) http://www.sanluisobispo.com/archive/122407osoflac o/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nipomo

I'll hear nothing bad said about Nipomo, the small town in which I spent my first grade or two. Unless I say it, of course.

Didn't know about Oso Flaco, though, I must admit.

haHA! Thank you, Dierna. Either I'm right, or Mexican Spanish is completely different. I'm a semi-native speaker. Half Colombian (no, I'm NOT a drug lord), half American, and lived in Colombia for 4 years. Oso Flaco surely means skinny bear... at least there.

How is that different from Dave's translation? Your bear is slightly thinner than Dave's? :p

Is there going to be a character named Nipomo now? I don't see how you can avoid it.

Besides: according to that scoreboard, Nipomo is winning.

(Side note: as soon as I thought of it as a scoreboard, I had the thought, "Wouldn't it be great if, while on a long road trip looking for a place to stop and eat, instead of road signs with the number of miles to a town there were road signs with the number of Diggs a town has gotten?" That's how I want to pick a pitstop: internet acclaim.)

It's not Thin Lake because the Spanish word for thin is Fino. Flaco is Spanish for Skinny.

I understand well that "flaco", "delgado" & "fino" all have slightly varied meanings in Spanish, but in *English*, someone tell me what the massive difference is between "thin" and "skinny" that we need to keep discussing the translation?

Wow! thats kinda cool! I love the first ten comandments movie! Me and my family love that Moses says "bandage" so many times.

Indeed! Once that happens Arthur will be in like, every picture I take.

Thin/skinny.

Po-TAY-to/po-TAH-to.

Who cares?

"...someone tell me what the massive difference is between "thin" and "skinny" that we need to keep discussing the translation?..."

Both of those terms appear to fit into the scalar range that includes 'slim - willowy - slender - thin - skinny - anorexic - emaciated - "seen more meat on a butcher's pencil" - transparent' where selection is often a matter of nuances.

Seems a not unreasonable topic t'me, Mr K, although I admit that views of a supposedly common language (and the role of nuance and often some implied valuations) from opposite sides of the pond may vary! (as found out the hard way by the "Glorious Glosters" half a century ago!)

Eh, there is a nuance of difference between those words in many languages, I'm sure, but certainly not to the point where you'd say "thin" is a wrong translation. Not even I would mark that as incorrect in one of my studets' translations, and I'm known to be a strict teacher ;) So talking about language nuances is an interesting topic - debating about whether Dave's translation is correct or not... not so much, if you ask me.

Ah, the Internet! I'm convinced that the next great war will be started by the Web community over some minor issue related to semantics. (Although, ordinarily, I'm always up for some antics!) Either that or the question of the greatest Star Trek captain.

Personally, I translated "Oso Flaco" as "Cross-Eyed Hedgehog." But, then, I took German in high school.

The joys of semantics and nuances. I'm enough of an artist-nerd to know and understand the differences between cyan, azure, midnight blue, navy blue, teal, turquoise, lapis lazuli... but if I had to put it in to German, all I could say is "blau".

Personally, I have a hard time telling dark blue from black. And don't even get me started on the whole "shades of white" thing. Eggshell, my posterior!

Oh yay I can finally post.

First I just wanna say thanks for people thinking the pic my wife and I sent in was so cool.

Secondly,I wanna thank Dierna for doing the research, but I gotta point something out. The Nipomo-Guadalupe Dunes area, where this was indeed taken, is not exactly outside of San Fran. It's 4.5 hours south of San Fran, and only 3 hours north of LA. All depending on traffic of course. Also, if you're wondering why I'm giving distances in time, that's just the way us Californian's do it. It's like Han Solo talking about making the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, rather than an inerval of time. The faster you go, the closer to the group of black holes you can skim, thus the less total distance the entire run takes. Things are just cooler backwards.

Lastly, as a resident of So-Cal, and someone who's been to Mexico 7 times, "thin bear" is a perfectly good translation of Oso Flaco. The core reason for the debate above I believe stems from people not realizing that thin has multiple definitions in English. "That girl is thin" (ese chica es flaca) and "that line is thin" (ese lina es fina) are two different words really. However, one of those definitions of thin, the one referring to people, animals etc, is the same word as skinny.

So "oso flaco" can be translated "thin bear" or "skinny bear", but "thin bear" can really only be translated "oso flaco".

I, too, have done extensive research on this topic (meaning one Google search), and have come up with the following key information.

http://www.icecreamusa.com/klondike/slim-a-bear/hi story/

They're yummy!

There's an extra space in "history" in the link above. Don't know why.