I saw a T-shirt with Mickey Mouse Flipping the bird with the word, “PUDRANSE” under it. Google was no help (to me at least).
pudran is the 3rd person plural of the verb pudrir = to rot. the ‘a’ makes it imperative and the ‘se’ makes it reflexsive. altho Ive never heard that phrase myself, I would translate it as “go rot (fuck?) yourselves”
I just wikidictionaried it. I don’t read Spanish so I m not going to hazard a guess, but my money is on something R-rated, anatomical and very coarse, given my slight knowledge of medical Latin derivations.
I’ll be watching to see what great minds say.
Doing a google image search of pudranse tells me it’s ‘fuck you’.
According to a class I took at Universidad Veritas in San Jose last summer, it is subtly different from “fuck you,” in that it means something more like “go fuck yourself,” which is a difference that is lost on most US English speakers, but it lacks the aggressiveness of “FUCK YOU,” which suggests “I am going to fuck (figuratively) you.”
The term, which does derive from the verb “rot,” is dismissive rather than aggressive. If someone threatens you, or directly insults you in a strong way, “Fuck you” is the response. “Go fuck yourself” is more of an obscene way of saying “Pound sand.”
Spanish takes distinctions like these more seriously than English does.
If someone annoys you, say, with his efforts to convert you to his religion, and you say “Fuck you,” you’ve really gone to far, and might earn some retaliation. “Go fuck yourself” is the expression you want."
Or, at least, that is the case in Costa Rica, and I was told it is generally the case in Spanish-speaking countries as contrasted with English-speaking countries.
Sounds like the exact same distinction between “Fuck you!” and “Fuck off!” in English.
“Púdranse” is a PG13-rated “Fuck you”. It’s aggressive, but not profane. There’s not a good translation, but the meaning would be close to a “fugg you” or “fark you”.
Depends on where you are. In fairly formal Costa Rica (also, from what I understand, Honduras, although I haven’t been there), where “tu” is pretty much obsolete, and swearing just isn’t done in public, you don’t say “pudranse.” Not that you can’t tell someone off in Costa Rica-- you just use circumlocution. Which is why what is essentially a metaphor, “got rot,” carries a whollop. In Mexico, direct swear words are more part of everyday speech, yes, and “pudranse” is a playground word.
FWIW, Costa Rica has a pretty rich vocabulary of circumlocutions, and things that you wouldn’t think mean something bad, but do (I had a long list of them from my conversational class, but I can’t find it right now). It’s also a “Su madre,” not a “Tu madre” country. Mexico wouldn’t get a lot of the circumlocutions, and uses “Tu madre.”
Pudran is the third person plural so isn’t Pudranse, “they should fuck themselves”?
Wouldn’t second person singular imperative be púdrase.
ETA: regarding tone, perhaps the English ‘sod off’ is closer. I don’t recall ever hearing ‘fuck you’ from kids on a playground.
As a Salvadoran-American I have to report that RivkahChaya is on the right track, not as bad as “Fuck You”. Literally is telling others to rot. As an expression it translates as telling others that they must die and then rot in the open.
It is more like telling others: “Curl up and die!” or “Go die (and rot in hell!)”
Thanks everyone. Sorry if it appeared I bailed on the thread, I got logged out and couldn’t get back in. New PW so it’s all good. Thanks again.
Thanks for the vote of confidence! I was doing pretty well communicating in San Jose, but I never know how much of what I learned generalizes.