Voices en Español

Today is Día de la Hispanidad, a national holiday in Spain which celebrates the country’s discovery of the Americas so many moons ago. The highlight of the day is a parade in Madrid of Spain’s military forces with Spain’s royal family and other dignitaries in attendance. Yesterday one of those dignitaries, Mariano Rajoy, leader of Spain’s opposition political party, put his foot into his mouth during a political party meeting when he was unaware that his mic was on. Rajoy could be heard clearly grumbling to one of his colleagues that “mañana tengo el coñazo de desfile.”  “Coñazo” is a vulgar colloquial term in Spanish, more commonly heard in la calle than in a high-level meeting of stuffed shirts. It’s a word widely used to describe something that is a f-ing hassle and huge (figurative) pain in the ass. Not surprisingly, Rajoy’s verbal blunder was national news and the poor, miserable politician has had to spend the past 24 hours in the media spotlight, trying to backpedal and explain away his gaffe.

So what does any of this have to do with you? Even if you have no plans to say disparaging things about your country’s national holidays into a live microphone some day, there may still come a time that you commit a metedura de pata (a verbal blunder) in Spanish and could use a few phrases to bail you out.

I’ve written about the topic of apologizing in Spanish before in “Sorry, Excuse Me, Forgive Me,” but here are some new phrases to add to the mix.

Quiero despejar lo que acabo de decir… (I want to clear up what I just said.)

Lo que quería decir era….. (What I meant to say was….)

He hablado demasiado, perdóname…. (I’ve said too much, forgive me.)

Lo dije sin darme cuenta.…(I didn’t mean to say it.)

De verdad, no lo hice a posta….(Honest, I didn’t do it on purpose.)

Me gustaría que olvidaras lo que acabo de decir… (I’d like you to forget what I just said.)

Por favor, no me lo tomes en cuenta… (A direct translation from Spanish doesn’t sound natural in English, so an equivalent phrase in English would be “Please, can you just forget about it?” )