I have a very close friend who’s six and a half feet tall, and has very big lungs. He has a bit of an anger management problem, and he swears a lot.
After twenty years of “GODDAMNIT!” and “SON OF A WHORE!”, I’ve decided that it would be a lot more fun if he swears in Spanish. We live in California, so that would be specifically Mexican Spanish.
Now, I took Spanish in school for years, but the one thing they never teach you is how to curse.
What is the nearest equivalent to “Goddamn it?” What do you say when you hit your thumb with a hammer? How do you commonly insult an inanimate object? And, what are the next order of magnitude of these?
Mainly because modern English rarely uses “whore” as a curse, while “bitch” is very common. Conversely Spanish very commonly uses “puta,” while “perra” is relatively less common.
That’s the thing with translation: the word that is exactly equivalent in literal meaning may have quite different levels of force or offense in the two languages. For example, “coño” is the equivalent of “cunt” in Spanish, but is much less taboo (at least in Panama). I have heard respectable women swear using this word in circumstances where you would never hear a woman use the equivalent in English. “Cabron” (male goat) literally means “cuckold,” which is rarely used as an insult in English these days. But in Spanish it’s one of the most offensive things you can say; the equivalent in forcefulness in English would be “motherfucker.”
My Spanish BiL swears using variations of shitting on something - Me cago on this, me cago on that. Seems like there is nothing that cannot be shat on in the Spanish profanisaurus.
*Me cago en la hostia *cracks me up, I think (but could be wrong) that you would say this to indicate surprise.
Yea, I made the mistake of telling my coworkers the meaning of coño. They keep thinking I’m saying something so taboo, but it doesn’t have the same connotation. One of them gets irritated I say it. :rolleyes: It is not insulting a specific person, it’s more of a “Fuck this!”. You don’t say someone is a a coño, you just say the word.
OTOH, it means nothing to my Chilean coworker, who doesn’t use it. For him, it means “pussy”. So yea, totally different feeling. But he keeps saying “concha tu madre” all the time.
Now that some real answers have been posted, I have a friend who enjoys exclaiming: “Sacapuntas!” It just means “pencil-sharpener,” but it sounds dirty if you don’t know that. (No, my friend is not a native Spanish speaker, and no, I don’t know if he’s ever encountered someone who knew what it meant when he used it as a curse.)
This is one of the longest string of Spanish curse words I’ve seen in a while. As mentioned before, the level of insult, along with reaction, will vary by region. Still, I think the meaning will be perfectly understood by the recipient.
For the sake of decency…
“Hijo de tu puta perra retardada chingada madre pinche puto culero chupa mis pinches huevos cabron!!!”
Perhaps it refers to a girl who sharpens a lot of guys pencils? Not that there is anything wrong with that . . . Or as Rod Steward would say “Hot Legs , keep my pencil sharp, I love ya honey!”
A friend of mine from Mexico told me that if you wanted to die in Mexico, just call someone “hijo de puta chingase”. That would pretty much ensure your rapid demise. To protect that person from incarceration, make sure there are witnesses. A judge would let him off, with this in evidence.
If that’s true, then Cornea’s phrase would probably cover you, your family, and anyone who’s with you at the time, should you all want to leave this world together.
