I’m not quite sure where to put this, as there is a factual and an opinion part. So I’ll stick it in IMHO; mods, please feel free to move if necessarly.
My mother is a Spanish teacher, and she absolutely loves grammar. She’s a real stickler on the grammar with her students, and is always thrilled to discover a new verb. Imagine, if you will, being trapped with the woman in a car for three hours, while she intermittently will start gushing about this “really cool new verb” she found, and how incredibly fascinating it’s irregular conjugation is. Yep, she’s weird, but I love her.
Anyway, I want to get her a shirt that says “Grammar Police” in Spanish. She’d get a huge kick out of it, as would her students. I can’t seem to find them premade anywhere online, however, so I’m thinking of having one made. I was going to use Cafepress, but they don’t have much of a color selection. Can anyone recommend a website? I also would prefer to get something that’s screenprinted instead of embroidered, because I don’t want it to be itchy. If they’re not that expensive, I’d like to get her one long-sleeved one and one t-shirt, in different colors.
Also, I’m not sure whether the proper grammar would be “Policia de Gramatica” or “Policia de la gramatica.” I don’t want to ask her, since I want it to be a surprise- anyone have any ideas?
You can buy blank t-shirts from American Apparel (I just like them b/c they’re sweatshopfree and really soft cotton, with good color and style selection, I wear them just as they are) and silk screen it on pretty inexpensively yourself–here’s a cheap screen printing tutorial and here’s a place to get the shirts. No affiliation of course.
Mrs. Bricker recommends Policía Gramatical, for the same reason that you’d say military police policía militar. But she cautions that the sense of the expression doesn’t really translate into Spanish – your mom will get it and it’ll be hilarious to her, but random passers-by on the streets of Madrid probably won’t chuckle.
Might I suggest zazzle.com? I’ve used them for two different office parties we’ve had. Design the shirt yourself and order as few or as many as you want (similar to Cafepress, as far as I know).
The laptop keyboard probably has a special function key to select letter keys as the numeric keypad. Do the letters on the right-hand side of the keyboard have numbers and math operators in a different color (like I-O-P with the alternative 7-8-9)? If so, there’s probably a key (in the bottom row?) also marked with that different color to select the keypad #s.