Last updated on
Thursday, April 3, 2008 11:00 AM EDT
Coger
As you may know, the verb coger, with its dictionary meaning, is not used in some Latin American countries, including Mexico and Argentina. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't use its compound verbs.
acoger, to receive, to welcome, to shelter encoger, to shrink
escoger, to pick out, to select, to choose recoger, to pick up sobrecoger, to startle, to scare, to surprise
According to my friend Roxana Fitch's web site, the list of countries where you should avoid using the verb coger is not short: Argentina, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
20080319 Last updated on: 20080328 (spanishNY.com) top
DoS: Spanish may sound like staccato or machine gun
Last year I worked with a U.S. diplomat who needed to pass the Department of State Spanish language test. During this time, I was in permanent contact with the DoS officials at their language school in Washington D.C., and received instructions on how to proceed. The text below is part of one of their manuals, which is intended for U.S. diplomats abroad:
Spanish Vowels.
Spanish has the same vowels as English (a, e, i, o, u, and partially y). There are, however significant differences in how they are pronounced. By the way, vowel sounds are subject to much less regional variance than are consonants: people in Pamplona pronounce vowels almost exactly like people in Patagonia. The major difference between Spanish and English is that each Spanish vowel has only one sound, which it retains at all times. This is quite different from English, in which the letter "a" can be pronounced at least four different ways, depending on its position in the word, what letters precede and follow it, etc. It has been estimated that, on average, the average pronunciation of a Spanish vowel takes about one-half less time than its English equivalent. The tendency to prolong, drawl, or slur vowels is one of the main constituents of a "gringo" accent. On the other hand, the relative rapidity of pronunciation of Spanish vowels, plus the fact that they are given their full value regardless of placement in a word or whether or not the vowel is stressed, give Spanish the staccato, machine-gun like quality that English speakers hear on first being exposed to normally spoken Spanish.
My student Sharon created her own Spanish radio station using pandora.com, where you can just login and type the name of your favorite artist, and pandora.com customizes a radio station just for you. There are plenty of Spanish artists, you can type any name like "mana", "shakira", "belinda", "rbd", "camila", "belanova", "juanes", "julieta venegas", "mecano". All of them are in Pandora, and it's free.
By the way,. in Pandora you can type "pandora", a Mexican band.
Oops. Since the day I signed up I've been receiving emails reminding me to use the service.
20080328. Last update: 20080328 (spanishNY.com) top
Mercy on the subway for H&R Block
The Spanish used by H&R Block in their ads is among the worst in the U.S. advertising industry. It's a good thing that we only have to see them during tax season!.
Esperar doesn't require the preposition por. It takes a direct object. Some merciful subway rider glued stickers covering the preposition POR on H&R Block's ads in the Port Authority subway station. They don't even bother to translate the word taxes to impuestos.
María Teresa, The Cuban Grand Duchess of Luxembourg
The Castro brothers might be the best known Cuban world leaders, but they are not the only ones. The Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, María Teresa, was born in La Havana during the revolution, and later in her life she met the Grand Duke while studying at a Swiss university. A good St. Valentine's Day story related to Spanish.
Luxembourg is a small country located between Belgium, France, and Germany.
Happy St. Valentine's. 20080214 (spanishNY.com) top
Spanish I don't usually teach you
Self explanatory. Warning: There are a few non-politically correct phrases.
I don't agree with them using the word gringo as an insult. It is not an insult at all. In Mexico, gringo is a white, U.S. person with blond or light brown hair, and blue, gray, or green eyes; or a product manufactured in the United States. It's not an insult.
Video credit: monkeywithashotgun.com. 20080212 (spanishNY.com) top
Constipado is not constipated
Watch out for a possible embarrassing situation when using this false congnate. Actually, Spanish speaking people are the ones who need to watch out. Estar constipado -in Spanish- means that you have a cold. If you want to convey that you are constipated, use the word estreñido.
Two of the possible candidates for president of the United States can apply -or have- Mexican citizenship. One of them already quit, Mr. Bill Richardson, and the second one, Mr. Mitt Romney, is still running. He is a Mormon but not from the Mormons of Utah, but from the Mormons of Chihuahua, in northern Mexico. His father, George Romney, was Mexican, and he was also a candidate for president of the United States.
Mr. Romney, who was governor of Massachusetts, for some reason avoids speaking in Spanish. Since Romney's family was originally polygamous, he still has dozens of dozens of relatives living throughout Mexico, being the Pratt family just some of them.
I cannot emphasize this enough. The letter V in Spanish doesn't sound like it does in English. Officially, the V and the B are pronounced exactly the same, and the sound is formed by using the lips only.
We recently had a problem when a Spanish speaking actor started saying his lines in Spanish using the V sound as in English. Unfortunately, we noticed late and it nearly trashed 1 production day. In Mexico, where a big percentage of the population speaks English, and where more than 1 million American citizens live, young people in the cities often pronounce the V as in English. It's like a new trend. Young pop music bands like RBD, ostensibly pronounce the letter V as in English when singing their songs. The problem is that not all the V words are pronounced like this, just some of them, so this is not a consistent habit. Examples, volver is sometimes pronounced almost like /folfer/, but vez is pronounced like /bes/.
This is from the Royal Academy. Basically, they are telling us to pronounce the V just like the B. They share the exact same sound. They are saying that the V sound (like in Latin, or English) has never existed in Spanish. They are saying that, for example, baca and vaca, bello and vello, acerbo and acervo, are pronounced the same.
v
. 1. Vigesimoquinta letra del abecedario español y vigesimosegunda del orden latino internacional. Su nombre es femenino: la uve. En América recibe también los nombres de ve, ve baja,ve corta o ve chica; su plural es uves o ves. La denominación más recomendable es uve, pues permite distinguir claramente el nombre de esta letra del de la letra b.
2. Representa el sonido consonántico bilabial sonoro /b/, sonido que también representa la letra b (→ b) y, en ocasiones, la w (→ w, 2a).
3. No existe en español diferencia alguna en la pronunciación de las letras b y v. Las dos representan hoy el sonido bilabial sonoro /b/. La ortografía española mantuvo por tradición ambas letras, que en latín representaban sonidos distintos. En el español medieval hay abundantes muestras de confusión entre una y otra grafía, prueba de su confluencia progresiva en la representación indistinta del mismo sonido, confluencia que era ya general en el siglo xvi. La pronunciación de la v como labiodental no ha existido nunca en español, y solo se da de forma espontánea en hablantes valencianos o mallorquines y en los de algunas zonas del sur de Cataluña, cuando hablan castellano, por influencia de su lengua regional. También se da espontáneamente en algunos puntos de América por influjo de las lenguas amerindias. En el resto de los casos, es un error que cometen algunas personas por un equivocado prurito de corrección, basado en recomendaciones del pasado, pues aunque la Academia reconoció ya desde el Diccionario de Autoridades (1726-1739) que «los españoles no hacemos distinción en la pronunciación de estas dos letras», varias ediciones de la Ortografía y de la Gramática académicas de los siglos xviii, xix y principios del xx describieron, e incluso recomendaron, la pronunciación de la v como labiodental. Se creyó entonces conveniente distinguirla de la b, como ocurría en varias de las grandes lenguas europeas, entre ellas el francés y el inglés, de tan notable influjo en esas épocas; pero ya desde la Gramática de 1911 la Academia dejó de recomendar explícitamente esta distinción. En resumen, la pronunciación correcta de la letra v en español es idéntica a la de la b, por lo que no existe oralmente ninguna diferencia en nuestro idioma entre palabras como baca y vaca,bello y vello,acerbo y acervo.
In Spanish, many professions and adjectives end in -dor, for males, but in -dora, for females. So I think whoever named the character Dora the Explorer in English, knew that it was going to be very appealing in Spanish. The masculine form for this occupation is explorador.
.
Now, let's imagine that Dora has some other occupations or attributes (good or bad):
Dora la Exploradora. Dora the explorer. Dora la Investigadora. Dora the researcher. Dora la
Ganadora. Dora the Winner.
Dora la Habladora. Dora the Talkative.
Dora la Administradora. Dora the Administrator. Dora la Toreadora. Dora the Bullfighter. Dora la Bebedora. Dora the Heavy Drinker. Dora la Corredora. Dora the Runner. Dora la Corredora de Bolsa. Dora the Stock Broker. Dora la Corredora de Bienes Raíces. Dora the Real Estate Broker. Dora la Venderora. Dora the Saleswoman. Dora la Peinadora. Dora the Hairdresser. Dora la Fumadora. Dora the Smoker. Dora la Donadora. Dora the Donor. Dora la Domadora. Dora the Tamer. Dora la Encantadora. Dora the Charming. Dora la Imitadora. Dora the Imitator. Dora la Gobernadora. Dora the Governor. Dora la Animadora. Dora the TV Host Dora la Pecadora. Dora the Sinner. Dora la Entrenadora. Dora the Trainer. Dora la Agitadora. Dora the Agitator. Dora la Lavadora. Dora the Washer. Dora la Afinadora. Dora the Tuner. Dora la Grabadora. Dora the Recorder. Dora la Narradora. Dora the Narrator.
Dora la Pescadora. Dora the Fisherwoman. Dora la Boxeadora. Dora the Boxer. Dora la Educadora. Dora the Educator.
I have received several Christmas cards, but in 2002 I received a very special one. That year the then President Vicente Fox's wife, Martha Sahagún, and I, had exchanged some letters. The previous year, 2001, my family and I met president Fox in New York when he visited Ground Zero. So I received this Christmas Card from President Fox and his wife. No, it's not like president Fox used to send Christmas Cards to every Mexican citizen!
The seal says "Presidencia de la República. Palacio Nacional."
I have a couple of pictures with President Fox, but in this one, from the Associated Press, I am the guy touching his shoulder wearing a baseball cap. He's a very tall man:
Mexican director and now producer Guillermo del Toro's new movie. Like Pan's Labyrinth, it was also made in Spain. Opens in the U.S. on December, 28th, 2007.
THE ORPHANAGE
Release date: 12/28/2007
THE ORPHANAGE
Release date: 12/28/2007
Produced by Guillermo del Toro, Mar Targarona, Álvaro Augustín and Joaquín Padró
Written by Sergio G. Sánchez
Directed by J.A. Bayona
The Orphanage, presented by Oscar-Nominee Guillermo del Toro, centers on a Laura (Belén Rueda from The Sea Inside) who purchases her beloved childhood orphanage with dreams of restoring and reopening the long abandoned facility as a place for disabled children. Once there, Laura discovers that the new environment awakens her son's imagination, but the ongoing fantasy games he plays with an invisible friend quickly turn into something more disturbing. Upon seeing her family increasingly threatened by the strange occurrences in the house, Laura looks to a group of parapsychologists for help in unraveling the mystery that has taken over the place.
Between 1825 and 1830, the U.S. minister to Mexico (today called ambassadors) was hiking in the mountains between Mexico City and Acapulco. Back then, It was the only way to visit that very important city and port in the Pacific. This ambassador, Mr. Poinsett, "discovered" and took possession of the flower, and named it after him.
In Mexico, this flower -actually a plant with little yellow flowers surrounded by special red leaves- is called Flor de Nochebuena (Christmas Eve flower) or Cuitlaxóchitl (its Aztec name). No one in Mexico calls the flower by the name of our beloved Mr. Poinsett, who by the way later became the Secretary of War during the first part of the war with Mexico, and whose descendants or heirs or beneficiaries still receive the fees that Mexicans have to pay for cultivating "his" flower. It's incredible that almost 200 years later, Mexican nurseries have to pay a fee to an organization in the United States for growing or selling their very own flower.
Nochebuenas are common in Mexico, and you can see it in the wild if you travel during Christmas season on the roads from the city of Oaxaca to the resorts of Puerto Escondido or Huatulco (southern Mexico). In the wild, the plant grows much higher, so their very distinctive long, red flowers stand out from other plants, making it easy to spot them while you are on the road.
The original variety of Flor de Nochebuena grows also in many gardens in Mexico City. I like better the original variety than the "plastic" looking one, which by the way looks also like a Botero represenation of the original, and doesn't usually last long after the New Years's Eve. This is the way the original variety looks like:
Organic is better! Of course, unlike Mexico City, the weather in New York doesn't allow this variety to survive in a garden outdoors.
In Mexico, we have some other red, Christmas flowers that I haven't seen here yet. I hope our current U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza de Aramburuzabala Corona doesn't take possession of them! They would be called Garzetias or something like that.
Waaaaat? Who is him? You know him! Everybody knows him. Especially in this season. His song is all over, in department stores, in radio stations, on TV....
.
You can see him performing "Feliz Navidad" at the Apollo Theater, Harlem, December 18th, 2007, 8PM.
José Feliciano is great a Puertorrican singer, who happens to be blind.
One of my students, Mark, and I, were able to attend the show courtesy of the Apollo Theater. That evening Feliciano made a lot of jokes. He changed the lyrics of his songs and said things like "La llama de nuestro amor ya se jodió" instead of ya se apagó. He managed to insert the word cabr_na in another song, making the audience laugh. The concert was mainly in English, so were his jokes. Of course, at the end he sang Feliz Navidad. These pictures were taken secretly as the security guards at the Apollo were very rough to people taking out cameras from their pockets. José Feliciano stood up for a while, but he kept on moving back and forth, so the pictures are not so clear. Needless to say that no flash pictures were allowed.allowed.
Photos by Mark DeLong.
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Fire
There are many words in Spanish to describe fire and related ideas. So I have students who ask, "what is fuego? It's fire, and lumbre? fire, and candela? also fire." It sometimes causes confusion.
fuego
fire (generic)
ascua
ember
brasa
ember
candela
fire (used mostly in the Caribbean)
chispa
spark
flama
flame
fogata
bonfire
fogón
bonfire, fire
hoguera
bonfire
incendio
a big, accidental fire, like in a building or forest
King Juan Carlos I of Spain told Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez, "Why don't you shut up?"
It's interesting that the King of Spain said so using tú (the familiar you form). The usted version would have been ¿Por qué no se calla?. I think it was risky; Hugo Chávez could have answered using tú also. There is no point to compare because, according to the media, this is the first time the King acts like this in public.The good thing is that Chávez eventually did what the king told him to do (Chávez would later say the King was lucky because he couldn't hear him, which is not credible). On the video, you can see how a few seconds before, the King warned Chávez by pointing at him with the finger and saying "tú", which was very unusual as well:
There is an expression ponerse al tú por tú con alguien, which is used when two unequal people argue, fight, or compete. Since the King used tú, this expression ilustrates this incident literarily, except that it's usually the lower ranking person who initiates the argument. In this case Hugo Chávez NO se puso al tú por tú con el Rey, because, fortunately, Chávez obeyed, but the King took a chance by doing this with this person.
The infinitive of this verb is callarse, which means to shut up. Callar also means not to say something, callar un secreto, to keep a secret or, rather, not to say someone's secret, quedarse callado, to remain silent, cállate (tú), cállese (usted), shut up!.
King Juan Carlos of Spain is a great-great-grandson, tataranieto, of Queen Victoria of England, which makes him a distant cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. Besides Queen Victoria, these two monarchs share many other ancestors.
According to some dictionaries, ahorita, diminutive of ahora, means the same as ahora, but I think they are a little different. I don't fully agree with them when they say it's still colloquial; in Mexico it's already mainstream, and it's used also in formal situations. This word is probably used in all Spanish countries except Spain.
Ahorita could mean right now, in a little while, currently, these days, at this moment, in a few minutes, just now.
Ahorita regreso. I'll be right back. Ahorita vengo. I'll be right back. Ahorita voy. I'll go in a few minutes. Ahorita no está. He/she is not here right now. Ahorita no se encuentra. He/she is not here right now.
Ahorita estoy trabajando en una oficina. I've been working in an office these days. Ahorita no, gracias. Not at this moment, thank you. Ahorita se acaba de ir. He left just now. He left just a little while ago.
¡Haz tu tarea! ¡Ahorita!. Do your homework! I'll do it in a little while! Ahorita estoy hablando por teléfono. Right now I'm in the middle of a phone call.
Number of matches for this word in Google:
Results 1 - 10 of about 3,880,000 for ahorita. (0.12 seconds)
No matter how many times I tell students that actualmente doesn't mean actually, they tend to forget. So I'll write it here.
actual means current, present actualmente, en la actualidad, currently, nowadays, at present, present time actualizar, to update, to modernize actualizado, updated última actualización, last update desactualizado, outdated
If you want to say actually in Spanish, say de hecho (in fact), en efecto, realmente
Once upon a time a Mexican guy from Texas sold a recipe to make "Fritos," he returned to Mexico and founded a company called Sabritas, the man who bought the recipe in Texas found a partner and both created the Frito-Lay company in the U.S.. Many years later, Pepsi-Cola bought both, Frito-Lay in the U.S. and Sabritas in Mexico. So Betcha Can't Eat Just One was translated to Spanish. How do you say it? (answer at the end.)
These TV commercials are at least 30 years old and are, of course, video tape quality.
Answer: A Que No Puedes Comer Sólo Una. Perfect translation by the way.
In most Spanish speaking countries, when we refer to a man who we may not know, or we don't know his name, we call him señor. In English, the word man is used:
Vi a un señor hablando por teléfono. I saw a man talking on the phone.
However, I have noticed that most Caribbean Hispanics (Dominicans and Puertorricans) living in New York use the word hombre. I am not sure if they use the word hombre in their countries, or it's rather a direct translation from English.
Vi a un hombre hablando por teléfono. I saw a man talking on the phone.
In Mexico, at least, the sentence above doesn't sound quite right; señor sounds much more respectful to refer to a fellow citizen than hombre. In the news, however, when talking about an unidentified man, the word hombre is frequently used in all countries.
Un hombre resultó herido en un accidente. A man was injured in an accident.
By the way, in Mexico, a man is usually addressed as niño up to about 13 y.o (in other countries they say chico), then people would call him joven from about 13 to 30's, and from 30's up people would call a man señor. If a Spanish speaking person calls you boy and you are over 20's, that comes from Spanish. (The Mexican wife of one of my students had a problem because she called a U.S. marine boy while working at a U.S. embassy. )
A few weeks ago, I was writing about Spanish car vocabulary, and how it is very different in Mexico and Spain. My theory was that cars came to the Spanish speaking world simultaneously to Mexico via the United States, and to Spain via France, and somehow there was not enough time to assimilate the new vocabulary for the new car parts. In some aspects, this is similar to what happened more recently with computer vocabulary, althought in this case, the first computer in the Spanish speaking world came to Mexico. (and our computer related vocabularies are quite different as well.)
Later, I found out that perhaps automobiles came first to Mexico before any other Spanish speaking country. Emile Jellinek-Mercedes, after whom Mercedes Benz cars got their name, besides being an Austrian-Hungarian national, obtained the Mexican citizenship in the early 1900's, and was also named Consul of Mexico personally by the then president Porfirio Díaz. It's not clear if besides being Austrian-Hungarian and Mexican, he was also German and French.
(Porfirio Díaz, Presidente de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos)
His Mexican name, as stated on his certificate, was Don Emilio Jellinek-Mercedes. This means his name was almost fully converted to Spanish. Emilio is a Spanish name, and Mercedes is the Spanish name he took from his daughter. It is very interesting that the document signed by the president of Mexico was written using "vosotros." In Mexico, unlike Spain, "vosotros" is considered extremely formal, and it was used only in cases like this. Don Emilio Mercedes' certificate was signed twice by the president of Mexico, once at the top, and again at the end of the document.
Mr. Jellinek-Mercedes was named Consul of the United Mexican States in Nice, Département du Var, des Alpes Maritimes, des Basses Alpes, des Hautes Alpes, de la Savoie et de la Haute Savoie.
The next historical document is the "Exéquatur," in which the President of the French Republic, Emile Loubet, acknowledges Don Emilio Jellinek-Mercedes as the Consul of Mexico, by request of the president of Mexico, Don Porfirio Díaz, dated on February 14th, 1906.
Mr. Mercedes was perhaps the most important car dealer in Europe. He was a director of the German car company Daimler, which later became Mercedes-Benz. Don Emilio signed many commercial and customs documents of shipments of products being sent from Europe to ports in Mexico, including his own products. Since Mr. Mercedes was also an Austrian-Hungarian national, he was the Consul General of the Austro-Hungarian empire in Nice as well.
The Mexican consulate was located at Villa Mercedes, 54 Promenade des Angleis, residence of Don Emilio Jellinek-Mercedes.
When Don Emilio took his daughther's name as his own lastname, he changed the lastname for his whole family. As a result, his daughter ended up with the following redundant name: Mercedes Jellinek-Mercedes.
Another historical but also personal document follows. This is part of the wedding invitation of Ms. Mercedes Jellinek-Mercedes. Apparently, it's an invitation to the president of Mexico. You can see her full name on it. Who would have thought that her name would be engraved on millions of luxurious cars circulating all over the world 100 years later. According to the invitation, the wedding took place on Saturday, February 20, 1909, at 11 hours, in the Church of Saint Pierre d'Aréne, Nice. I wonder if she received a Mercedes car as a wedding gift, at least!
I doubt the president of Mexico in person would have left his country, traveling by sea for an entire month, to attend a wedding in Europe, however, somebody might have attended the event on his behalf.
Several years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Don Porfirio Díaz's tomb a couple of times. He was the president who signed all these documents about Mr. Mercedes. I am not Mr. Díaz's fan, but it is a very interesting site for a Mexican to visit, since he is part of our history. After the Mexican Revolution, Porfirio Díaz died in exile in France during WWI, and his tomb is in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris. In that country, he must have met again his old friends of the Mexican Consulates in France, including Mr. Mercedes. You can see the Mexican eagle on the upper side of his monument.
You can see the same old Mexican seal on Don Emilio Mercedes' documents that were prepared at Villa Mercedes. It remains unclear to me whether Don Emilio Mercedes spoke or wrote Spanish well, for most of the documents of his to which we had access, were written mostly in French. I think he wanted to play safe.
Due to the First World War, Don Mecedes ended up in a bad position living in France as Austrian-Hungarian, but as Mexican, the government he represented had ended because of the Mexican Revolution.
I want to thank the Federal Government of Mexico, custodians of all these historical documents, for unearthing them after a couple of months of search and research. All government officials involved in this research were extremely nice and supportive.
Remember that the English pronunciation of MERCEDES is quite, quite wrong. Try to fix it and pronounce it correctly in Spanish. Also, try to fix the pronunciation of Volkswagen and Porsche (pronounce the e) in German, and Hyundai in Korean, and ...
