Would an adult Latina NOT know?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I went into the hospital on the 23rd of this month, and got out the afternoon of the 24th. No huge deal, just some semi-severe Shortness of Breath attacks, that were soon brought under control.

Late morning on the 24th, I was in my room, talking to the floor nurse - a male - when his aide, a very nice Latina, who’d given me excellent care came up to us and was about to interrupt. However, the nurse (the aide’s boss) turned to her and said “No me joda.”

I was stupified. I hadn’t heard this expression uttered since I left Gtmo in June of '56. it means “Don’t fuck with me.”

Note:no exclamation point. He said it without feeling, as if only to show off that he could talk rotten in espanol.

Neverthelees, I was friggin furious. You don’t say that crap in front of a very nice young lady, much less direct the it to her.

So, I reprimanded the nurse, and that was that -for the moment, anyway.

Later in the day, the same aide was again in my room and I explained to her that she has to stand up to that moron, and not permit him to talk that way to her. And if he persisted, I told her to call me and I would report the guy. Somewhere along the way, I translated “No me joda,” and she said she didn’t know what that it meant until I translated it!!!

This has me even more astonished.

This is a married woman with an 8 year old son. Could she go through her life never hearing this expression?

Ladies, have you heard and do you understand “Don’t fuck with me,” when anyone says it in your presence?

2

I’ve never heard it. I don’t speak Spanish, but work with Spanish speakers every day.

3

I mean, was she Latina as in “Spanish accent”, or was she Latina as in “last name ends with a z”? I don’t know the term, of course.

4

Latino here.

Just because she is Hispanic does not necessarily mean she understands Spanish.

Also, joder is not used by all spanish speakers. It’s very uncommon in some parts of Mexico for example.

However this is what I think is the most probable explanation to what happened: you were wooshed. The two are probably friends and talk that way to each other all the time. Since they assumed you wouldn’t understand what they said they did that in front of you. When you complained they played along with your assumption that he was being disrespectful. This happens pretty often believe it or not.

5

Some words have different meanings in different dialects. I don’t know if this is the case here, but I can ask some Latinas that I work with next week. Once a Puerto Rican told me that cohelo suave meant “take it easy”, then I found out that in Mexico it means “fuck it easy”, after I said it to a Mexican, of course.

By the way, I too have been having shortness of breath lately and am getting quite concerned and of course will call my doctor next week, but just out of curiosity, what was your diagnosis? You can pm or email me or just not answer if you wish, I would understand.

6

To answer the OP question in the literal sense, yes, possibly. Not that she would not know “joder” is considered crude language, but that it translates in such a specific manner.

I would agree we’d need more info on exactly what sort of “latina” she is, as in, e.g. 2nd generation Mexican-Am raised in NY, so we can understand what her dialect background would be.

The fact is there are different usages according to cultural idiom. Here in PR, for instance, “joder” is considered rude and unfit for TV, but it no longer conveys quite the same sense of “fuck” as it did in the original Castilian; for practical purposes it is often casually thrown around as just a particularly vulgar manner of saying “make trouble”. I can easily see quite a few average Josés in the PR community NOT be aware that “joder” translates to “fuck” (or, likewise, that “coño” translates to “cunt”), but merely think the word is a generic expletive profanity, not necessarily a particularly hostile or offensive one.

However, in any case, in a professional environment and in front of the patient that was still inappropriate, even if used casually and with no ill will. Unless in the heat of urgently attempting to revive me from a code, I would not appreciate an English-speaking care team addressing each other around me in terms of, for instance, *“no shit, really?” *, and I would not appreciate “no me jodas” either.

7

There are a lot of spanish speaking countries and the slang/curse words are different for pretty much every single one. To me “no me joda” is simply a slightly crude way of saying “don’t bug me”, i wouldn’t bat an eye if someone said it to me.

8

I’m an adult Latina. My mom and uncles, all from El Salvador, occasionally say “no jodas”, meaning “quit messing around” or “you’re shitting me.” The word “joder” meaning specifically to fuck is mostly used in Spain, from what I can tell from watching Almodovar films. Although I have heard my relatives saying of another person “se lo jodieron” when they meant he got screwed over.

9

I know it as “fuck,” and am not Latina. It was interspersed in some of my co-workers’ speech about as frequently as “chinga.”

10

Like other have said, she may not speak Spanish, or she may speak a dialect that does not use the verb “joder.”

Another possibility is that neither she nor the nurse find this expression offensive, and you were embarrassing her by becoming so heated about it. In Spain, swearing in general is taken very lightly. Television does not censor any language, people of all ages and classes swear like sailors, and nobody seems offended. Even children’s movies are dubbed using swear words that were surely not in the original. (I remember watching “The Sound of Music” and being aghast that the children were calling each other “gilipollas”- the Spanish equivalent of “asshole.”)

11

Your thinking is a little dated sir. I understand you had good intentions but really, women these days can swear every bit as good as men can these days.

12

Well, perhaps,but I think she said she comes from Mexico, and from what I’ve learned in this thread, she may not have ever heard the expression there. So I believe her.

Appopriately enough, her name is Digna, which translates to Dignity. Neat, huh?

13

Doesn’t ‘joder’ simply mean ‘catch’ or ‘grab’ or something like that in some places? (I have a Spanish friend who related getting into a humorous misunderstanding with an Argentinian or something like that)

14

With that link in the OP, I found “No joda” to mean “Don’t fuck with me.” I guess the “me” is optional. :slight_smile: Down in Gtmo, I got that same translation any number of times, from the full range of folks.

All of us swabbies had respectable (they didn’t put out :)) Cuban gilfriends, with whom we never said such things. In fact, I accorded the same respect to my Cuban gal, Elita, that I did to her American successors.

15

“No me joda” or “no jodas” is often used to mean “No way!” as in “¡No me jodas! ¿En serio?”. There are several regional and national variants, and “joder” is the sort of verb that’s used for several things on each one.

16

No, you are thinking of “coger”, which can mean “grab” in standard Spanish or “have sex with” in Mexican.

17

Presumably you also had “less respectable” gfs, with whom you said little else but.

18

Surprisingly, no.

There didn’t seem to be a need to act shitheadedly after midnight when we’d have dropped off the girl friends and went to La Zona (the red Light district).

It was more enjoyable to be nice to the putas there. They rarely experienced that. We’d dance, drink, sing, dance, dance, dance, always keeping a low profile to avoid attracting the Shore Patrol. After all, we were in civvies, and thus out of uniform.

But we also genuinely liked some of those girls. Me and a couple of buddies would take a certain one out of her bar/brothel, and go non-whore bar hopping, to eat drink and dance. On the way back we’d each slip her $10 to make up for lost tricks (which went for $2 a throw).

In another such hovel, a very young gal begged me (almost in tears) to be her papacita - her pimp!!! because I always behaved like a gentleman, treated her as a lady,and she desperately needed someone to love her. And respect her.

I wasn’t a saint, but I wasn’t an oafish sonofabitch either.