Oso this one is for you

OOPS! Forgot that thread was in Spanish, here's the Gringo part translated:

(All from thaaaat board- Baja.net)





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Re: Gringos Sat, 10 April 2004 15:15 Go to previous messageGo to next message
GRINGOS
By Arturo Ortega Mor?n
(Specially dedicated to my friends at Baja.Net)
Translated by Oso


Gringos. That is what, in Mexico, we call our neighbors of the North, particularly the Anglo-Saxons. We have with them, a proximity which has marked our history and has diminished our geography. We have from this, one of the expressions with which we try to justify our frustrations as a country: �Poor little Mexico, so far from God and so close to the gringos!�.

But, why do we call them gringos? Very widespread is the explanation that this word was born in the 19th century, during the U.S. invasion of Mexico. Within this hypothesis there are different versions.

One says that during the Mexican-American war (1846-1848); the Northamerican soldiers who invaded Mexico sang a song called �Green Grow the Lilacs�. Those of the North sang it so much that the Mexicans, as good as we are at making nicknames, soon used the sound �green grow� to refer to them.

In the other version, perhaps the more popular, it is maintained that when the Northamerican soldiers invaded Mexico, they wore green uniforms. The Mexicans, in bad English, shouted �green go home� at them, and from this came the word �gringo�.

If you believed either of these explanations was true, let me tell you that it is plainly demonstrated that they are false. The word �gringo� is of Spanish origin and is documented since the 18th century. It appears in the �iccionario Castellano con las voces de ciencias y artes� (1787); compiled by Father Esteban de Terreros y Pando. There it says: �Gringos: so called in Malaga, those foreigners who have a certain kind of accent, which deprives them of easy locution and natural Castilian; and in Madrid they are called the same and for the same reason, particularly the Irish�.

If you still have doubts, the following Spanish [from Spain] text from 1840 (Before the Mexico-U.S. war); is sufficient to discard any Mexican origin:

-?Qu? entiendo yo de bodegas, y de abonar el terreno,
y si se mide el centeno por varas o por fanegas?
-?Qu? entiendo yo de elegancia, y de ese tono de aqui,
ni qu? me importan a m? los figurines de Francia?
-De la barra y la pelota yo el m?rito no distingo.
-Ni yo de ?peras en gringo, donde no cantan la jota.

[What do I know of warehouses, and fertilizing the soil.
And if wheat is measured in yards or fanegas (unit of measurement in liters or square meters)
What do I know of elegance or the way they speak here,
Nor what do I care about figurines from France?
Of the stick and the ball, I don�t distinguish the merit.
Nor of operas in gringo, where they don�t sing the jota (popular Spanish music/dance)]

The most probable, is that �gringo� is a deformation of the word �griego� [Greek]. An argument in favor of this is that when we don�t understand something, we say indistinctly that �estaba en gringo� [it was in gringo] or �estaba en griego� [it was in Greek]. Also, suggestive of this is the ancient Latin proverb �graecum est; non potest legi�, which means �it�s in Greek and cannot be read�. Also a related word is �greguer?a� which means, �confused shouting�.

One never knows the repercussions of not studying languages. If those soldiers who invaded us had been given courses in Spanish, we would never have called them �gringos�.

Gracias OSO (thanks OSO) for looking up ,this for me, bye the way I get along with gringos