My son told me he was working at this place and the Spanish-speaking co-worker taught his supervisor a supposed swear word. Have anyone ever heard of this and what does it mean? It is probably Latin American. It sounds like (according to my son): “yo momis sway”.
Now he says the meaning of the phrase is “your mama’s way” but in Spanish it is pronounced “yo momis sway”. I don’t think either of us knows what he is talking about. And if it means “your mama’s way” I don’t see how it can be a swear.
Lo siento… no entiendo.
Well, I don’t know a hell of a lot of Spanish, but the first thing that comes to my mind is something like, “Yo mame es, wey” which would be pronounced roughly like “yo momis sway”, and would mean something like “I suck it, (you) jerk”. In that case, I’d guess the coworker is trying to trick the supervisor into insulting himself.
But I most likely have no idea what I’m talking about, and Nava or someone else will be along shortly to correct me.
I am going to guess that the phrase was, “No mames, wey.” Translation, “Don’t joke/fuck around, man.”
No : [do] not
mames : informal imperative of “mamar” = to suck
wey : alternative/slang pronunciation of “güey”
Literal meaning : Do not suck, ox.
Figurative meaning: Stop fucking around, dumbass.
“Mamar” can mean, among other less-comon things, “to suckle”, “to get completely drunk” or “to give a blow job” (aka mamada, now you know another word your grandma wouldn’t want you to know). In any case, not something one should be doing in the middle of a conversation and here you have another vote for Pyper’s guess.
No need for guesses. This is it.
Most definitely this, except it’s spelled no mames, güey (last word pronounced like “way” in English).
It’s a very common (actually annoyingly common) phrase in Mexico and in the U.S. mostly among young Mexican men, as it is considered vulgar.
Nope, nope, nope.
Yes, it’s “no mames, büey” (also spelled “guëy”), and yes, literally, it would mean “don’t suckle, ox”.
But what it really means is “Totally, dude!” (or, in some contexts, “Wow, man!”).
Not an insult. An affirmation or expression of mild surprise. (Though it is “vulgar”, in the sense of “informal speech used mainly by young people”.)
If you spell it with a b, no dieresis: buey. The spellings güey and wey (I’ve seen both) represent a different pronunciation. In Spanish, the only letter which gets to wear a dieresis is the u, and only in güe/güi to show it’s pronounced (it wouldn’t be in gue/gui, where it shows that the consonant is G rather than J like it would be in ge/gi/je/ji).
And it means “totally, dude!” but also “go tell that to the Marines, dude!” or “fuck off, dude!” or “go on like that and you’ll wake up in the hospital, you little piece of shit!” Like so many things, its meaning changes by context and tone.
Ah, thanks. My bad.
True. Another common meaning is “You have GOT to be kidding!”; or, if you’re telling a story, “I mean, dude, PLEASE!”; that is, “Give me a break!”. In other words, mildly exasperated surprise at something.
But I thought it was important to point out to the OP that it’s rarely an insult (in the many places in Mexico I’ve heard it used, anyway). For “fuck off, dude”, there are many much stronger phrases one would me more likely to use.