So last week I was in court for a minor traffic matter, and while I was at the clerk’s desk waiting to pay, I saw a Mexican-looking guy trying valiantly to make himself clear in Spanish, while the poor clerk was getting nowhere, speaking only English. I speak what I call “High School Spanish” - which is to say, I took Spanish all four years of high school. Unlike so many who have completely lost it, I can still spit out something resembling a coherent sentence when need be.
Or so I thought.
After some back & forth, I eventually got from the guy that he was confused about his court date – the cop had put the wrong date on the ticket. I explained this to him and he seemed to get it. But then he asked me how much he would have to pay. I meant to tell him:
El juez va a decirte cuando tu apareces, which loosely translates as “The judge is going to tell you when you appear…”
What I actually told him:
El judio va a decirte cuando tu aparaces, which loosely translates as “The Jew is going to tell you when you appear…”
If this were a sitcom, his judge would be Jewish, and the defendant, basing his behavior on your statement, would greet the judge with “¡Hola, Judio!”, and get himself thrown in jail for contempt of court.
I’ve told this story before. Back around the mid 1960s my aunt was in her 30s and dating a man who’d emigrated to the US from a small town / village in Belgium. His extended family there was a) huge, b) culturally very traditional farm folks, and c) spoke only French in the Belgian style. She’d taken French in school, traveled a bunch there, and although by no means fluent, she could get along OK, partly due to he and she spending a lot of time speaking French together to improve her skills.
Their relationship is getting sorta serious, so it’s time to meet the family in the home village. Big dinner, tables groaning with fresh farm cooking, parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins galore gathered round. Lots of happy boisterous talk throughout the meal. The whole Hollywood look. She’s struggling to keep up with the language, but feeling pretty good about how it’s going.
Late in the meal someone asks if she wants more food, proffering a big bowl of whatever it was. To which she replies in French “No thanks, I’m full”. But she fell for a false cognate and actually said “No thanks, I’m pregnant.”
Instant silence throughout the room. And rapidly building tension.
BF had to quickly explain what happened both to the crowd and to his baffled GF. All was well after a few minutes. But a couple of old biddies never quite believed her language blunder wasn’t a vino veritas admission. At least not until the requisite 9 months had passed with no offspring.
Aunt loved to tell this story on herself. I’ve heard it a bunch of times and it never ceases to make me smile.
They were married a few months later. And a couple years after that had 2 wonderful kids together. She died earlier this year and he’s deep down the drain with Alzheimer’s. They were / are both in their late 80s and were doing great until shortly after hitting the 80 mark. Then the wheels fell off.
My mother in law lived in Buenos Aires for several years. She got pretty good at Spanish, but some subtleties still escaped her. For several months she goes into the grocer and asked “Tienes huevos?” and she would get some eggs. One day, someone pointed out to her that she was actually asking him if he had testicles! Oops! Next day, she goes in and asks “Hay huevos?” (Are there any eggs?) He burst out laughing, “Thank you!”, I guess he never had the heart (or, perhaps, balls?) to tell her she was wrong all that time.
There’s a scene in a movie (I think it’s Thelma and Louise, but I’m real bad at movie titles) that runs on the same premise.
The sheltered American women lead characters are in a small Mexican hotel and ask the hotel worker for huevos for breakfast, and the way-over-the-top wannabe Latin Lothario character announces in proud Spanish that he has the largest / best testicles in all the world while grabbing his crotch. The women are horrified at the crotch grabbing but otherwise mystified.
Yes, tell us about it. I gather that the tilde changes the meaning, but I can’t tell what it changes it to.
When my sister was in high school, she was taking Spanish, and one of our neighbors, a Mexican immigrant, insisted that she speak to him only in Spanish, so as to gain more practice (despite his own English being perfectly fluent). Well, one day, she was baking something and realized that we were out of eggs, and so, as one does, she went to a neighbor to borrow some. “Hector, I need…” “Uh, uh, en Espanol!”. But she couldn’t remember the word “huevos”, and so she asked for “Dos… pojitos?” “Pojitos?” To which she replied with gestures “Pojos” (flapping arms like a chicken), “Pojitos” (holding hands together in an oval shape).
For years later, you could send him into hysterical laughter just by saying “Pojos pojitos”.
Yeah. Not only does general vocabulary change with national versions of Spanish but so does the slang. I was told this can lead to hysterically funny incidents like those being described here, and sometimes to violence.
Ah. For examples the other way, I’ve been told by native Spanish speakers that they have to be very careful in English when referring to sandy shores, or thin bedcovers.
You can even get into trouble between different Spanish-speaking countries. One Latin American acquaintance told of being in a grocery store in a different Latin American country, and thinking he was asking for a plastic bag, when the word he used meant “condom” in the local vernacular.
As explained above, in some places “pussy”
(female anatomy), often implying (as in English) “asshole/jerk” — but in other places this has been weakened to a mere “dude.”
There was some Microsoft thing in Venezuela back in the 1990’s (I think) where a registration form was trying to ask for gender but was highly offensive in the Venezuela vernacular. Hembra, perhaps?
My Google-foo is weak right now, or I have the county wrong.
Just to dispel any ambiguity, coño is a vulgar term. Even where it can be used like “dude” it wouldn’t be used in a kid’s cartoon. Michaelangelo isn’t going to call Raphael coño and get away with it just cuz they’re in Caracas.
We were in Spain in January, and knowing that Christmas there is January 6th, we ran to the grocery store the afternoon of the 5th to grab a few groceries for the apartment where we were staying. The place was just about empty and we tried to orient ourselves and figure out where the basics were: pasta, milk, etc. It was a touristy area, and although I am fluent in Spanish, of course the sales clerk didn’t know that immediately, snapped into “help the clueless tourist” mode, and pointed me at the case of roscas de reyes (traditional cakes for Three Kings day). “No, gracias,” I smiled and told her - “soy judia.” So she motions to us to follow her and takes us to…the canned green beans (las judias). I broke into hysterical laughter, as did she once I explained the misunderstanding.
(Pardon my missing accent marks in Spanish - I do know where they belong, I am just too lazy to figure out how to type them here.)