Photo courtesy of the Fundación Carpe Diem
I can’t help it.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.
There are Spanish expressions that sometimes fit the bill better than anything in English.
That’s just how it is when you speak two languages. That’s how your brain works.
Sometimes you find the right word in one language. Sometimes it comes to you in another.
You can take a word from one language, and turn it into a new word in the other language. Jacket becomes chaqueta. Saber becomes savvy. Truck becomes troca1. Vaquero becomes buckaroo.
Sometimes a joke is funnier when you tell it in one language, and deliver the punchline in another.
Call it Spanglish, Franglais or whatever you want. I call it, selection of the fittest—word, that is. It's like you have a little bridge in your brain that moves between one language bin and the other. I can only imagine what life is like for polyglots.
Speaking a second language doesn’t mean you substitute the word in your native language for the word with the same meaning in another language. You don't substitute one symbol for another. It's not that easy. It's not a straight exchange.
Words are loaded. They carry unique meanings that bear the weight of history, culture, geography, and a specific time and place.
Anyone who has had to translate from one language to another will tell you that it isn’t wise to translate literally. You’ll have more success if you find just the right words in the other language that will convey, more or less, what you are trying to express, and how you might express it in your native tongue.
For example, in English I might say, “Yikes, it’s hot today,” but in Spanish I might say, “¡Santo cielo! ¡Que calor hace! Holy heavens, it’s hot today!
According to Dictionary.com, “yikes” dates back to 1770 and likely derives from the fox-hunting call “yoikes.” It is a most decidedly English term from a specific time and place, but one that has evolved and is used to this day, even by Yanks who have never ridden, hunted or seen a fox in the wild.
In English, I might say, “What the hell is going on here?” In Spanish I might say, “¿Que carajo esta pasando aqui?”
Carajo2 is the Spanish term for the “lookout nest” in a ship. Spain once ruled the seas, and there was no greater hell for Spanish sailors than to be trapped in a galleon’s lookout on stormy seas. The queasiness and seasickness they associated with the task has turned the very term for the lookout into a curse word. Many native Spanish speakers have forgotten the word's original meaning.
My mother and grandmother pulled out Spanish dichos or sayings to fit every occasion, and, for some reason, they always sounded wiser, older and more ominous than English proverbs.
As far as I can tell, nothing can scare you straight faster than a Spanish ghost story like La Llorona3 or a proverb like:
Amor de lejos, amor de pendejos. Love from afar is the love of fools.
or
Dime con quién andas, y te diré quién eres. Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are. (Birds of a feather flock together.)
or
El ladrón juzga por su propia condición. A thief believes everyone steals.
One of my favorite Spanish dichos of all time is, “Cada cabeza es un mundo.”
Every head is a world.
I first heard these words while I was living in South America in the 1980s. A friend smacked his head and uttered them when he heard about something that someone else had done, and it made no sense to him whatsoever.
“Pues, cada cabeza es un mundo,” he said. “Well, every head is a world.”
Because I’m a visual thinker, I immediately imagined people walking around with globes for heads, with ideas swirling around in the upper stratosphere of their minds.
Think about it. Every head is a world. Every single human head on our planet is unique. No two are alike. Everyone’s life experience is unique. Everyone has their own thoughts, and thought processes. Everyone has singular prisms through which they filter reality, and everything that happens around them.
Those differences are what make us individuals.
Cada cabeza es un mundo reminds me not to judge people by what I see on the outside. It reminds me not to project my limitations onto others. It reminds me to appreciate the multitude of ideas that abound in the universe, and not to assume that everyone can relate to me and my personal experiences.
When I hear people speak from their life experiences, and I can't really relate, the expression forces me to step back and look for universal truths, to try to understand where people are coming from.
It’s a hard lesson to learn, but one that is well worth the effort.
Because, cada cabeza es un mundo.
Every head is a world.
-30-
© Essay by Deborah Méndez Wilson, 2012. All rights reserved.
1 I am well aware that "troca" is part of the lexicon that has arisen on the U.S.-Mexico border. The proper word for "truck" in Spanish is camion or camioneta (pickup truck).
2A reader challenged my definition of the origin of the Spanish word "carajo." In this blog post, I used a definition I got from UrbanDictionary.com, and Wiki.Answers.com. The reader says the Royal Spanish Academy, Spain's official language keeper, does not recognize the definition of carajo to mean a "lookout nest" in a ship. I can't say with certainty that "carajo" does or does not mean "lookout nest," but I can say from personal experience that it is a word that is plugged into sentences to mean a lot of different things, and that the word is on the vulgar side. In a lot of ways, it is very similar to the eff word in English. Let's put it this way: Had George Carlin spoken Spanish, he would have had a field day with carajo.
3 La Llorona is the mythical "weeping woman" whose ghost wanders Mexico and the Southwest searching for the children she drowned in a river after her Spanish lover spurned her.
Below: YouTube video of Mexican American singer Lila Downs singing "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" or "Quizás, Quizás, Quizás," written by Cuban songwriter Osvaldo Farres. It became a worldwide hit in 1947.
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koshersalaami
catch-22
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Man Talk Now
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Comments
r.
And I love your quote and visual. There's so much truth in those five little words.
When my daughter was ill...I wished that my family could speak Yiddish..not that I do, but there were some expressions that kept coming to tongue and no one to understand. Language is such a fascinating subject. It connects.
http://www.open.salon.com/blog/os_readers_picks/2012/07/19/os_readers_picks_12th_awards
I loved this piece. It's national publication quality. It really fits my original concept of the TSBAK - This Should Be A Cover comment - that gave Amy the idea to launch Readers' Picks.
Like Ande, I likened this to Yiddish, which I know a little of but, as little as I know, there are expressions that work better in Yiddish because there isn't exactly an English equivalent. Like "fardrayt," which literally translates as "spun around." (If you know what a dreidel is, same root.) Or the longer "Fardrayt dein eggenneh kop" which means "Spin your own head around," or stop being so elaborately confusing.
Lezlie
When I hear German, something deep inside me resonates and thrills to every ugly guttural sprech.
That's just a rule of 'nature' in the world that is my head...
Goethe:
• Willst du immer weiterschweifen?
Sieh, das Gute liegt so nah.
Lerne nur das Glück ergreifen,
denn das Glück ist immer da.
•
o Do you wish to roam farther and farther?
See the good that lies so near.
Just learn how to capture your luck,
for your luck is always there.
•
o Variant translation:
Do you wish to roam farther and farther?
See! The Good lies so near.
Only learn to seize good fortune,
For good fortune's always here.
………………………
Then there is the Good Book… guy roams around speaking Aramaic, probably in a very poetic way, it gets written down in Greek, then in 1600 (same time as Shakespeare!) English, and eventually in boring bland modern English. The voice of God doesn’t quite reach me, alas.
When I first got to Spain (in 92), I barely spoke Spanish- much less understood Castillano- and my flatmate barely spoke English. She took me out one night, we visited some of her friends, and nobody spoke more than a couple words to me. I sat there, formulating in spanish, the best joke I could. It brought a smile of relief to her face, and I used it as an icebreaker after that.
¿Cómo se llama una persona que puede hablar tres lenguas? (¿Qué) Trilingüe. ¿Cómo se llama una persona que habla dos lenguas? (¿Qué?) Bilingüe. ¿Cómo se llama una persona que habla solamente una lengua? (¿Qué?) Americana.
The best thing about learning to speak spanish is making the effort and having a smile on your face. That and a cerveza will make you friends everywhere.
This was a a really great post, Deborah. I want to read it again asap. Muchas gracias, senorita beuna.
Patrick: De nada (you're welcome). I've always thought that was one of the best Spanish expressions ever.
JL: I agree about book translators. They even earn international reputations for their ability to translate the author's original language in a way that really captures what the author was trying to say. It's endlessly fascinating. I've always loved that expression. When I found the visual, I was in heaven - in my own mind's eye, as it were.
Ande: I loved your notion that you need ANOTHER planet to keep your thoughts, etc.! I love Spanish, too. I really think that learning another language can be a mind-expanding experience. As for Yiddish, think of all the terms we use in the U.S. everyday that originate in that language, including one I can't write because I know it is a curse word in Yiddish. Language does, indeed, strike a chord with all of us.
Mary: I loved your phrase "global brain!" That rocks. And, coming from someone who writes as beautifully as you do, I'm glad you liked this post! :)
Clay: Another great phrase "all of us in our tiny world of vision and experience." Thanks you for adding smartly to the conversation.
Kosher: You should list all of the Yiddish words that have become part of American English. I know there are several: schlep, putz, schmuck, kvetch, etc. I'm Hispanic, and I use them!!! I loved the notion of "spinning your own head around." Brilliant. And thank you for nominating this as a reader's pick. I'm honored.
Lezlie: I loved your use of "Ay, Dios mio," and that you spelled "ay" correctly!! So many English speakers give it the English phonetic spelling of "aye."
Chicken: It is a compelling visual, isn't it?
TG: Pues, gracias!
Mary: Now there's a great word, "jaunt." Wonder what its origins are? :)
A.K.A.: Idiomatic expressions are so fun, aren't they? I had so much fun explaining them to students when I taught English in South America. They were always so mind numbing to them. And there are so many in English. We don't realize until someone trying to learn our language asks us about them.
James: The guttural sound of the germanic languages has always fascinated me, too. Sometimes I watch foreign films just to see how much I can understand without reading the subtitles. Romance languages are much easier for me to understand.
Oryoki: You hit on something important: Language unites people, and bridges cultures. And, yes, it's a good way to make friends. Loved your joke. It was good of you to poke fun at yourself for the greater good of communicating with others. I loved that.
Fernsy: Comedian George Lopez has a funny schtick (Kosher! Another Yiddish word to add to our repertoire!) about Latinos not using the word "yikes." I beg to disagree. It's become one of my favorite go-to words, funny as that sounds.
Miguela: It's never too late to learn! I watched telenovelas when I was learning Spanish and it really helped! :)
KC: Oh my gosh your comment made me laugh. Loved it! :)
Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observe
these examples:
Freundschaftsbezeigungen.
Dilettantenaufdringlichkeiten.
Stadtverordnetenversammlungen.
These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions.
Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen.
Alterthumswissenschaften.
Kinderbewahrungsanstalten.
Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen.
Wiedererstellungbestrebungen.
Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen.
Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching across
the printed page, it adorns and ennobles that literary landscape but at
the same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it blocks up
his way; ... "
- Appendix D of A Tramp Abroad, "That Awful German Language"
meaningsense
in a word
by elongating it to absurdity,
piling wordsuponwordsnot spoken spokenstill?
(Germany is of not west nor east)
have a saying
it is:as someone who somehow sort of speaks German
(for dad was germam 100 percent)
i gotta say
firstoff, i kindasorta forget whatiwas(not) thinking,
( i got no memry of it til later, where i must trust
it is important if it replays)
Like a new english word to invent ,, why for any reason's sense,
not/
? call it...
uh
awe and wonder are prolific in the Word, which is
why his habit is to MAKE IT FLESH
whenever it c an. ha.
,,,,,,,,,,,,
and twas error but sin of..uh, yknow, the anti sin shit
like: negligency?
R♥
One invention que me encanta: Claro que pues!
However, I now live in Spain, and Spanglish is very much frowned upon.
Spain, like France, is paranoid about English encroaching too much on their language, and the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language publishes a dictionary every year where some 'anglicismos' (English words as spoken by the Spanish) are admitted and many are not. Or not yet anyway. After all, if everyone starts saying 'cliquea', then eventually 'cliquear' will be accepted as a proper word.
I have to say that, unlike modern English or French, who tend to just adopt words as written in the original language, the Spanish tend to do a good job of turning an English or foreign word into a Spanish one. And not just them.
If you've visited South America there is ample proof of this where hundreds of Maya, Aztec and Inca words were 'Castillianized' over time. For example, Avocado- Aguacate in Spanish, from the original Nahuatl word "ahuácatl".
So today, there is a real drive to use as few foreign words as possible in Spain, unlike Latin America, where the more foreign words you use, the cooler you are.
I suppose it must be because Spain, like France and the UK, are the sources of the language in question, and for them to loose that would be to loose a large part of their national identity. Certainly I find that in Spanish America people are less concerned about peppering their speech with 'Americanismos', meaning North American English. But in Spain, to use foreign words sounds pretentious, and people will quickly tell you the modern Castillian equivalent.
It happens to me all the time!
I guess every country es un mundo too and la cura de un man es el poison de otro. ;)
By the way, have you ever heard Lhasa de Sela's song La Llorona? I don't know if it's from the same story but she spent a lot of her childhood in Mexico. Here's a link if you're curious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3A50PfvOY0
Catch-22: I loved your description: a "reunion of lenguas haciendo una fiesta in my brain and/or boca." Genial!
AOG: I know what you mean. I'm familiar with the venerable Real Academia Española. But, when it comes to language revolving around la tecnología, it'll be interesting to see how the Spanish-speaking world handles it. Latin Americans have said "software" and "hardware" for years. With the Internet, I can only imagine the new language that is sprouting. I learned to speak Spanish in South America, and my grandmother spoke an archaic Spanish native to the U.S. Southwest. It was funny when I used words down there that people thought were quaint. Example: estropajo. My grandmother called a cleaning rag an "estropajo," but in South America, the word is an archaic way of saying "sponge."
Thank you for commenting, and lending your rich viewpoint. :)
Abra: I've always loved that song! It's a Mexican folk song, and there have been many versions. I'd never heard Lhasa de Sela's version. I adored the version used in the film "Frida," which was sung by Chavela Vargas and Lila Downs. I've included that video above. :)
Pelo de estropajo, is what happens when you fry your hair with too many dye jobs.
I love that word.
I'll be visiting your blog often now that I found it. And I'm following you on twitter.
;)
Un hola, y un adiós.
Love 'Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps' - first heard it on the theme for 'Coupling' a British TV show, but never heard this version. Thanks.
AOG: So I guess I can use the word confidently!
Sally: Thanks for stopping by. :)
Icy: I never would have guessed that English is your second language. You write so well. Just goes to show that you one can really learn to dominate another language. Best of luck with your new translation work. So, what's your native language? Hindi? India has so many! You ought to write about the faux pas and new words that have overlapped between the two languages. I think English has borrowed many words from India, including "shampoo" and "pajamas," right? As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, English is “the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.”
The Spanish spoken in old Nuevo México has, indeed, archaic elements due to its roots in all those who followed the Camino Real either looking for gold or shelter as so many Conversos did. But the word "estropajo" is in use throughout México to describe the wad of ixtle strands used to wash dishes. Many families used it also to wash themselves (in fact, that's what I use to this day!). Nowadays, a modern facsimile, such as a those fancy plastic mesh balls one finds in Target, are used.
BTW, the RAE informs us that this is a "planta de la familia de las Cucurbitáceas, cuyo fruto desecado se usa como cepillo de aseo para fricciones." A loofah, in other words. I've tried them, but they can't beat the ixtle estropajo para una buena fregada. :-)
Cerro Verde: ¿De veras? ¡Carajo! Ni siquiera podemos confiar en la información que encontramos en el Internet hoy día. ... La respuesta suya no fue de ninguna manera una impertinencia, pero ahora me preocupo por haber incluido un error en mi blog. ¿Debo buscar otro ejemplo? No quiero dar mala información a mis lectores.
Maybe it was just my ex-inlaws who thought "estropajo" was archaic or regional? I never heard anyone else use the term in the 10 years I lived in Venezuela.
I did see plenty of those loofahs, though, and used them in the shower all the time. They grow on vines in Venezuela, and the burros eat them. I'll never forget when an American friend and I were shopping for souvenirs once, and I picked up a loofah and told her they grew on trees. She scoffed scornfully, and pitied my "ignorance" about the Caribbean. She thought they came from the sea. Then I pounded the loofah on my hand and showed her the black seeds. She was speechless. Moments like that are priceless. :)
Pues así es, eso es lo que dice www.rae.es. Lo curioso es que la primera definición es "miembro viril" y eso hace que el uso de ciertas palabras es peligroso dentro de ciertos círculos. Si no, corre uno el riesgo, como dijo un gringo amigo mio, de quedar embarazado. ;-)
(Si alguna vez se encuentra en una librería mexicana, pida un ejemplar de "Picardía mexicana" de Armando Jiménez. Es un compendio del uso del lenguaje en México, que, aunque ya un poco caduco, es todavía vigente. La wikipedia en español tiene una buena entrada acerca de este libro.)
Well, we all think that language is local until we read other countries' literature, travel, or interact with foráneos. I'll never forget the first time I used the word "tirar" while in the presence of Venezuelan friends. Speaking of loofahs, they are vines, not trees, just like their cousins the cucumbers, melons, sandías, etc.
There's another Venezuelan expression that always drew incredulous glances: echar palitos - which means "to have some drinks." So, you'd say, "Vamos a echarnos unos palitos," and people from other Spanish-speaking countries would blush. Also, in Venezuela "chicha andina" is a rice-based drink, a lot like Mexico's horchata, but not quite the same. There was a commercial in Venezuela way back in the '80s that made all the Puerto Ricans howl with laughter. A guy would open a fridge and say, "¡Ay, me rasparon la chicha!" (They stole my chicha!), which in Puerto Rico meant something else entirely. I'll leave that up to your imagination.
I still remember many Americans using the word "embarazada" to mean embarrassed, and Latins who thought "to take a douche" meant to take a shower. :)
Ay, que graciosos somos los seres humanos, no?
Gail: Now there's an intriguing thought, so many worlds, sometimes in the same head! :)
No problem.
I can remember having a conversation with an American Jewish friend who moved to Israel (his father fought in the war for independence) and married an Israeli girl. (In this case, what I might call a Jewish Palestinian - her ancestry in Palestine went way, way back.) She's a native Hebrew speaker. She asked something that I could handle easily, so I replied "Piece of cake." Translated directly, that's of course a non-sequitur.
There are a bunch of words that have made it into English, and not everyone knows that they're Yiddish. Like Tush, which is a variation on Tuches (that CH is pronounced KH, not like cha cha). Or like Mish Mosh. It's usually spelled "mish mash" in English, but I've heard people mispronounce it - in Yiddish, the second vowel sounds like a short O.
There's Chutzpah, same ch, which means unimitigated gall but worse. The classic example is the guy who murders his parents then throws himself at the mercy of the court on the grounds that he's an orphan.
I like "farbissineh." Accent on second syllable. It means "bitten'' and it means bitterly annoyed, overly sensitive and snappish.
There is of course Mensch. It translates simply as "man" but it doesn't mean that so much as it means "ideal man by a Jewish definition," which entails being considerate, responsible, going out of your way, stepping up to the plate, being ethical. Nowadays, you'll occasionally hear the expression used on women.
@Firechick: Sounds like this would make a good blog piece for you. I'd love to hear more!