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surabi
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All terms dealing with time are vague in Mexico. Even ones that sound specific, like, "Si, vengo a las 10".
I was once at an office where I had to speak to a specific person. The receptionist told me he was out of the office. I asked when he'd be back (you
also have to solicit every piece of information, as "He's out of the office right now, he'll be back at 1", would require giving you all the info
efficiently), and she replied, "Un ratito". The dictionary definition of which is "in a little while".
As I wasn't hip to these things then, I sat down in a waiting room chair. After 20 minutes, I asked, "When do you expect him back?", to which she
shrugged. I asked if she knew whether he was coming back to the office at all that afternoon, to which she answered no.
Now when someone tells me "un ratito" I ask, "Un ratito como cinco minutos o cinco horas?" I usually get the shrug.
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Don Jorge
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Another word which is fun to say and usually involves facial emphasis, Guácala.
�And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry
years. It was always that way.�― John Steinbeck
"All models are wrong, but some are useful." George E.P. Box
"Nature bats last." Doug "Hayduke" Peac-ck
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pauldavidmena
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Quote: Originally posted by surabi  |
All terms dealing with time are vague in Mexico. Even ones that sound specific, like, "Si, vengo a las 10".
I was once at an office where I had to speak to a specific person. The receptionist told me he was out of the office. I asked when he'd be back (you
also have to solicit every piece of information, as "He's out of the office right now, he'll be back at 1", would require giving you all the info
efficiently), and she replied, "Un ratito". The dictionary definition of which is "in a little while".
As I wasn't hip to these things then, I sat down in a waiting room chair. After 20 minutes, I asked, "When do you expect him back?", to which she
shrugged. I asked if she knew whether he was coming back to the office at all that afternoon, to which she answered no.
Now when someone tells me "un ratito" I ask, "Un ratito como cinco minutos o cinco horas?" I usually get the shrug. |
I love that "ahorita" is no more precise than "ahora."
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surfhat
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Or mañana.
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pauldavidmena
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Another favorite Spanish word is "malabarista", which translates to "juggler" in English. I see it as how I might prepare lattes and espressos if I
worked at Starbucks.
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AKgringo
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I was in an open air restaurant near Zihuantanejo once where there was a parrot that kept calling out "Ahorita!" (Right now!).
Apparently, it was his dinner time.
If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space!
"Could do better if he tried!" Report card comments from most of my grade school teachers. Sadly, still true!
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surabi
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I find the words that appear to be taken from English, but then, because they are spoken with a Spanish accent,, become a word in Spanish with no word
origin basis in Latin languages, to be amusing.
Like "dona". I figure some Mexican came back from the US and said, "They have this yummy pastry there, it's called a dona". (In English, doughnut
makes sense- it's made of dough and apparently the first doughnuts were more like a doughnut hole shape- a nut shape rather than a torus)
Once I was working on something alongside a worker, and needed the exacto knife that was next to him, so asked him to please pass me the cuchillo (I
wasn't sure what the specific name for an exacto knife was, but figured that was close enough). As he passed it to me, he told me it wasn't called a
cuchillo, it was a "cooter", spelled "cuter".
That is obviously a mispronunciation of "cutter" but in Spanish, of course to cut is cortar.
One word I found confusing when learning Spanish was "subir". Because in English, as well as Spanish, "sub" is a prefix denoting something below-
submarino, subterraneo, subordinado. Yet subir means to go up.
[Edited on 6-6-2023 by surabi]
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surabi
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Thanks for the new word, navaja. It actually wasn't a knife like that, I don't even know what you call it in English- one of those little knives with
long replaceable blades that you slide up and down and can snap off the dull top to get a new sharp cutting end.
That worker had never been in the US- he told me the farthest he'd ever been from here in Sayulita was Acapulco, on some field trip with his church
group when he was a teenager. But I'm sure he worked with lots of other guys who had worked up north.
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pauldavidmena
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what a roller coaster!
This isn't so much a question as much as a recent discovery on my part: the Spanish translation for "roller coaster" is apparently "montaña rusa",
literally "Russian mountain."
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pauldavidmena
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| Quote: Originally posted by lencho | | Quote: Originally posted by pauldavidmena | | This isn't so much a question as much as a recent discovery on my part: the Spanish translation for "roller coaster" is apparently "montaña rusa",
literally "Russian mountain." |
Wikipedia:
"La montaña rusa debe su nombre a las diversiones desarrolladas durante el invierno en Rusia, donde existían grandes toboganes de madera que se
descendían con trineos deslizables sobre la nieve. Irónicamente, los rusos lo llaman Amyerikánskiye gorki (en ruso: Американские
горки) o "montaña americana"." |
Who knew that amusement parks could be another front in the Cold War?
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pauldavidmena
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puzzling...
Today's word of the day from spanishdictionary.com was "rompecabezas", translated to "jigsaw puzzle" but literally "break heads." Ouch!
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Skipjack Joe
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favorite: boracheria
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pauldavidmena
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It took some digging to find a definition for chahuiztle. Very Mexican!
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pauldavidmena
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| Quote: Originally posted by lencho |
Mexican indeed (consider the spelling).
But I think we have a failure to communicate: the definition... is right there in the page I linked to above... ¿? |
You are indeed right (once I read the article)!
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una cosa desagradable nos ocurre de repente.
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surabi
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lencho
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Cacharrería
"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is, by how stupid he thinks I
am."
"...they were careful of their demeanor that they not be thought to have opinions on what they heard for like most men skilled at their work they
were scornful of any least suggestion of knowing anything not learned at first hand."
Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
"Be kind, be patient, help others." -- Isabel Allende
"My gas stove identifies as electric." Anonymous
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pauldavidmena
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One of my favorite MythBusters episodes examines how a bull might react in a simulated china shop.
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