American Spanish is different than that various Latin American Spanishes. We’ve got things like “mopiar” (to mop, such as a floor) and “parquiar” (to park a car). The use of “madera” instead of “leña” doesn’t seem so far fetched.
Home Depot exists in Mexico (my ex-BIL is some executive there). It’d be interesting to compare their signs with signs in the USA.
That is exactly the reason. Various Spanish forms in different countries are homogenized by a Spanglish term that is comprehensible to Spanish speakers, regardless of their country of origin. Dominicans or Puerto Ricans might be offended by a “Mexican” sign, so the advertiser tries to split the difference.
In some countries, “leña” means only “firewood”, and Home Depot doesn’t make many things out of that.
Remember that Home Depot doesn’t use Spanish because they are forced to, but as a convenience that maximizes their expected customer base’s positive experience. They probably put quite a bit of thought into that.
The Latino guys I interact with on a daily basis were all born in Mexico, coming here as adults. They all use “madera” for lumber when speaking to each other. I suppose it’s possible they speak “American Spanish”, but I doubt it.
One point that I don’t think has been made is that even if most of your Spanish speaking customers can get by in English, it shows them respect to give their signs in Spanish.
I say this from my own experience living in Quebec. I am much less likely to want to spend money in a store that will not do me the favour of putting their signs in English. Even though by law, they are required to say
Affiche en Francais
English sign
(I exaggerate a bit.
Most of the home depots I’ve shopped at not only have signs in both Spanish and English, but have a few associates who are fluent in both. My local Home Depot also has a few sales associates who are fluent in Amharic as well.
The signage in usually pretty simple. My contractor/handyman liked Home Depot because they have the same layout and he can just find what he wants quickly without checking the signs.
Whats funny is that English can creep into Spanish speaking immigrants Spanish. My contractor is Ecuadorian and is married to a Salvadorean lady. When he and I were replacing the handrail here in the house, neither of us could remember what it was properly called in Spanish, we both kept saying el railing.
That’s what we’d actually call it in an auto plant in Mexico (or, rather, “el rail,” but probably spelt differently).
Sounds like the Translator server error cafe in China.
A note to the OP (and anyone else like him – he’s far from the only one): When you talk about something happening “here,” and you don’t have the location field filled out in your profile, be sure to mention where “here” is.
Even then it’s still a good idea to mention where “here” is.
I have a lot of older posts that talk abut things near my location where it then was. Now that I’ve moved and updated my profile’s location, those old posts don’t show my location as of when they were posted, but as of when you display them.
So you’ll see posts my from 2012 talking about all the snow on the ground near my location. Which now displays as “Southeast Florida USA.” Oops.
The same thing is true of your profile sig. So if you change ever it, there may be a bunch of old posts where you used your then-current sig because it fit the old thread. But maybe it doesn’t fit so well with your newer sig(s).
I happen to own a large carpintería (custom woodworking shop) and have also in the past procured maderas preciosas for foreign buyers. A good friend of mine owns a lumber business called “Maderas Finas de Jalisco”. A lumber yard is called a maderería". The word leña is the word for firewood. Many people here still cook over wood fires and use leña. You will see pizza a la leña or birria a la leña offered in restaurants.
I don’t know about auto plants but the common term amomg woodworkers, steelworkers and aluminum fabricators for a hand rail in México is pasamano.
In Spain both pasamanos and raíl work, although they’re a little different. In fact, a raíl is a part of a pasamanos, but only of some pasamanos…
OK, if you look in the dictionary, it only defines raíl in reference to railways; it’s the two long parts on which the actual wheels stand. But we also use the word for “the long staves on the sides of anything that looks like a railway”; we can refer to the raíles of a stepladder or of a pasamanos with vertical bars (a hanging pasamanos wouldn’t have a raíl). Take a different logical jump, and you see it used for any long, staff-like item which works as a path for something: a curtain’s rod, or in those libraries with the hook-on-top ladders the rods on which you hook the ladder before climbing up.
And BTW, RAE gives both the spelling with and without the stress marker as valid.
It is quite different in México. One hardly hears the word rail used for anything. We use riel for the english word track, such as railroad track or the track for sliding doors. And that is the word I would use for pretty much any sliding mechanism such as the ladder you mention.
We use riel too (and it’s got both official definitions, unlike raíl); I know people who use raíl more than riel, people who use riel more, and people who use them for different things. I think I’ve never heard riel used for the lond sides of a ladder, but that might be happenstance or it could be my ailing memory toddles away in search of her walker.
I’ll point out that when I referenced auto manufacturers, I meant American auto manufactures in Mexico. There’s certainly a lot of Spanglish going on.
But in casual listening to others, it’s not a convenience for us North Americans; it’s used between the employees, too. “Rail” is pretty universal, but other words vary by region.
In the north, they might say “los bodysides,” whereas in Edomex. they might say “los costados” (this is a major piece of the car body that probably has no common meaning in either language outside of the industry).
On the other hand, the difference between “coche” and “carro” aren’t Spanglish, and are regional, too. Fuck, don’t get me started on “quesadilla sin/con queso.”
I’m not sure how well CBEscapee and Nava would communicate in real life, but my time in anti-Spanish Catalonia was by far the easiest accent adjustment I’ve ever had to deal with, and no one resented my Spanish use. I’m pretty decidedly Bajio-centric.