For my Spanish class, I need to write a short composition introducing myself and all that good crap. Naturally, this needs to be in Spanish. I’ve emailed my professor, but she’s been at a conference for the past week, and she hasn’t answered me yet. Spanish-English dictionaries aren’t much help, since they just say “these world all mean to knit” and the info is scant past that. I’m starting to get a little frustrated, and so I turn to you, diverse peoples of the SDMB.
This is what I’ve discovered, from WordReference, with my own little comments sprinkled in. My actual paper dictionary has even less information. There’s no entry for any verb but tejer in the Spanish Wikipedia, and that just talks about weaving.
[ul]
[li]hacer punto – intransitive verb, apparently means to knit. Punto in aria is a type of needlelace.[/li]
[li]tejer – transitive verb (past simple and past participle); broadest meaning is to weave. Ex: Me tejío un jersey. He knit me a sweater. tejido – fabric. tejero – tilemaker.[/li] li calceta (el labor de lana) – feminine noun; knitting. Calcetar is offered as an alternative to to knit in the entry for tejer.[/li]
[li]tricotar – transitive verb (past simple and past participle); I think it means to knit. Matches up with the French. [/li]
[li]hilo de perlé, de tejer – yarn[/ul][/li]
Which one should I use if I just want to talk about knitting? Does it change from the way you use the word? If I want to say “I like to knit,” would I say Me gusta tricotar or would I say Me gusta tejer? Or would I say Me gusta calcetar? Or Me gusta hacer calceta? I’m also having trouble finding out if any of these verbs are irregular, so if anyone could tell me if any are, I’d be very grateful. (Well, except hacer. I already know it’s irregular.) Do the uses of it vary from country to country?
My gut instinct is to use tricotar, because in French, the word for knitter is la tricoteuse and to knit is tricoter, and I’m very conservatively assuming they have the same root word.
I’m so confused! There’s too many words for knitting!
Here’s what 3 years of Spanish will get you:
When using “gustar” for “I like to ___,” gustar is the only verb you conjugate. I like to knit becomes “me gusta tricotar,” provided tricotar is the right verb to use for knitting.
Good luck with the first part.
Oh, I am aware of that. I’m more than familiar with gustar and verbs that act like it. I’m not an idiot. My problem now is more one of idiom and navigating the subtleties of language, than one of grammar.
No, Pullet, it’s okay. I’m just a little cranky right now, because I’d really hoped to get this done tonight, since tomorrow I’m going to be in Chicago all day as my college choir is performing at Orchestra Hall with actual professional musicians, and a couple other really, really good college choirs. This is made doubly nervewracking by the fact that the composer of the piece is going to be there all the way from Eastern Europe. I am, let us say, tense.
It’s my fault for being grumpy. You were trying to help, which I do appreciate. You don’t have to slink back under your rock, because you were never under one to begin with. Mea maxima culpa.
Yanking out my Katia patterns (which have directions in Spanish and occasionally questionable english), I’m seeing a lot of “trabajar a punto” or “tejer” (but “tejer” may be referring to finished pieces - while trabajar seems to be during. Maybe. My spanish isn’t good enough to tell for sure.)
Should you need it -
garter stitch - “punto bobo” o “punto tonto” o “punto de musgo”
ribbing - “punto elastico”
stockinette - “punto jersey”
I’ve never used any of these verbs, cause I don’t knit, but looking in the RAE’s dictionary and in WordReference’s translation dictionary, I would suggest Me gusta hacer punto for I like knitting and Tricoté / Tejí este suéter for I knit this sweater. Tejer and tricotar are regular in conjugation, BTW.
For knitting in the abstract sense you intend, I would recommend hacer punto.
And particular Spanish that you’re focusing on, i.e., one of the Spain Spanish, or a particular Latin American country?
In Mexican Spanish, tejer is indeed the word that you want to use for knitting and crocheting in general. It generically means to weave. Those funny shaped things of yarn that one buys at Mary Maxim are called estambres, and since I know the word in Spanish, some enlightenment in my native English would be appreciated.
Me gusta tejer. Con estambres de algodón hago calcetas para las niñas. Con los de lana hago esuéteres para el frio. I like knitting (to knitt). With (those yarn-tubes) I make socks for the girls. With wool (the wool ones) I make sweaters for the cold.
Added the example to point out that calcetas are little girls’ socks. I don’t know the verb form; apparently there’s a specific work to indicate the making of little girls’ socks? Or maybe it means to put one’s socks on. It’s not darning; that’s a different word I can’t think of immediately.
I would like to thank everyone for their input. It was really helpful. My professor had no idea about knitting terms, so this all was more helpful than you can imagine. I went with hacer punto/calcet for more abstract usage, and then tricotar/tejer when talking about actually making something.
College Spanish? The Spanish I’m studying in college is supposed to be very generic Spanish from the Americas, but it skews heavily towards Mexican Spanish. It’s definitely not castellano.
I think the word you’re looking for is skein. If it’s rolled into a ball that you can pull from the center of, then it’s a pullskein (or pull-skein, depending on how much you love hyphens).
I think calcetar just means “to knit,” since knitting first developed in-the-round (knitting around in a circle so you don’t have to seam, like for socks) and was popularized most prominently by the vogue for handknit, close-fitting stockings in the sixteenth century. At least in England. There are some portraits of the Madonna knitting a baby shirt for Jesus from the, uh, 14th or 15th centuries, but I think that’s mostly a French/Italian thing, and there’s only one extant example of knitted work that’s not a stocking.
LOL The literal translation of the first two are “fool’s stitch” and “stupid stitch”. The last one is “moss stitch”, but that’s not nearly as entertaining.
And now I need to get busy making some little girls die of embarassment with socks.
Miss P., here is a bunch of references to knitting-related websites etc. in Spanish. Your knowledge of Spanish and your knowledge of knitting combined will probably be enough to let you pick up the standard usages of Spanish knitting terms there.
{{hugs}}