Yucatan

This relates more to Mayan than Spanish but I thought it was an interesting tidbit, illustrative of all the miscommunication between native peoples and europeans over the years. This is how the state and peninsula got its name: One of the first Spanish explorer/conquistadores asked an Indian what the place was called. The Indian replied "I'm not from around here." The Spaniard wrote down what he thought he heard and thus we have Yucatan, also known as the land of the deer and the pheasant.

?

"Yucatan" = "no soy de aqui"

No joke. Just a bit of historical trivia I picked up on a Spanish website.

Here's a joke for your translation practice:

Comentario de una madre: "Pobrecita de mi hija, que mala suerte tiene. F?jase que su marido le sali? cornudo!"

Oso, I heard it a little differently. When asked "what place is this?" the Mayan replied....Yu-chua-tan.... which I'm told in Mayan means....I don't understand you.

Sometimes bad luck is better than no luck at all.

Could be. I only know a few words of Mayan, but the process sounds familiar. Most American Indian tribes have two names, one they call themselves and one others call them. The latter is sometimes derogatory and sometimes given to them by enemies. The former is generally some form of "people, humans, the real people" or so on. (My wife's people are H?a?hu, called Otom? by the Spanish). I once made up a story to illustrate this: A European explorer "discovers" some Indians and, through faulty translation, asks "What are you?" The respondent replies, "Us? We're just people." "And what about the tribe just over that mountain?" asks the explorer. "Those guys?" says the Indian, "They're no damn good." And thus, generations later you have a tribe called the Peepholes and their neighbors, the Nodamguds.