Help with understanding apparent Spanish language insult?

Factual Questions
1

I recently came back from two weeks in Ecuador, with Earthwatch. It was a great trip. I was particularly impressed with the warmth and friendliness of the people.

Much to my delight my smattering of middle school Spanish came back to me and I was able to have somewhat intelligible conversations with the locals in their language, as long as the subject of the conversation wasn’t too arcane. Oh, and I was stuck in the present tense.

A couple of times though when our male Ecuadorean helpers were clearly good-naturedly joshing each other a particular joke or insult came up that they weren’t able to explain to me. It had something to do with the concept of “sister-in-law” (“la hermana de tu esposa”). There was clearly some significance I was supposed to attach to this, in the context of teasing one of one’s close male friends, but I didn’t get it. This only came up when there were no women around.

For background, these guys were from the southern coast of Ecuador, and working class, not terribly well educated.

Anyone have any idea what this was all about?

Paging OneCentStamp, who spent two years in Ecuador…

2

I dunno. Any chance that they have a standing joke based on Leviticus 18:18?

3

New International Version in Spanish. (Older Spanish translations used mujer instead of esposa.)

4

I suppose that’s a possibility.

Any help from the Monday morning crowd?

5

Sorry, LL, but I can’t help you. While I did live in Ecuador for a couple of years, and in the area you were in, the saying doesn’t ring a bell. I was there over a decade ago, though, so it may just be a newer thing.

6

Are you male and married, and if so, was your wife traveling with you?

It could be that they found your wife attractive and were jokingly asking if she had a sister.

If you are a single man, perhaps they were offering to introduce you to their sisters-in-law.

7

I am male and married but my wife wasn’t travelling with me. I didn’t have a picture of her with me or anything. They did know that I was married however.

As far as I could tell the joke had nothing to do with me. These were three friends who know each other quite well, and there was good natured teasing going on between them. I got the impression both times this came up that they were anxious to let me in on the joke so I could appreciate their no doubt witty repartee but there was too much of a language barrier to make it happen.

OneCentStamp thanks for checking in anyway. Maybe you were hanging out with a higher class of people than me?

(FTR I was in the Mindo area, not the coast, but the Ecuadoran helpers had travelled from their homes because they have helped the Principal Scientist a lot in the past and had a lot of useful skills for her project).

8

After reading and reading your OP several times and reading the other posters answers, I am also stumped. I think there is a missing part to your OP that would gives us a better idea to your query. Just based on what you stated, they could probably be kidding about how one of the fellows was probably attracted to somenone’s cuñada OR how one of them was probably having a go with his wife and his sister-in-law.

Is not unusual in Latino working class culture for a man to try to pair his wife’s unmarried sister to one of his unmarried brothers or very best friend.

But… :confused: …who knows…

9

Yeah, I’m beginning to think this is the right track. This might have been a specific “in” joke among these three guys, period.

If someone were to overhear me and my two brothers joshing with each other, some of the jokes would make no sense at all, unless they happened to know certain details of the 30+ years of shared experiences we have.