Voices en Español

It’s natural to look for words that sound or look like words in your native tongue when you are learning a foreign language. It’s like swimming in an ocean of inscrutable words when suddenly, on the horizon, appears a (verbal) life jacket. You grab ahold of it, quickly put it on, thinking you’ve bought yourself a reprieve from drowning, only to realize, too late, that that verbal life jacket you are wearing isn’t going to make things better, but possibly, make things worse. OK, maybe not worse, just more confusing.

These tricksters are false cognates or cognados equívocos in Spanish. That’s their technical name. Informally they’re called “false friends” or falsos amigos. The reason is because they have spellings similar to English words (or, in some cases spellings that are exactly the same) but they have totally different meanings. A prime example is embarazada (which means pregnant) and embarassed. There are a ton of these false friends, too many to fit comfortably in a single blog post, that’s why I’ve put together a list of 101 of them.

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Eleena

Social networking sites are currently all the rage. These web sites are online public squares where people can stay up-to-date on what their friends and frenemies are doing.

Although the two market leaders Facebook and MySpace have versions in Spanish, there are some Spanish-language social networking sites that have arrived on the scene and are growing rapidly in Latin America and Spain. It was reported this week that Sonico, an Argentine company that launched last August, has raised $4.3 million in funding from various investors. In under a year, Sonico has signed up 17 million members, according to TechCrunch.

Other Spanish-language social networking sites include Badoo, Wamba and Tuenti, which is currently by invitation only. If you don’t know someone already using Tuenti, you can’t get behind the digital velvet rope.

Other than being Spanish-language only sites, it’s not clear to me what innovative or distinctive features these new players are offering that aren’t currently available on Facebook or MySpace. It makes me wonder if these companies aren’t just pure short-term strategic plays designed to stake an early claim to the Spanish-speaking market and then cash out in a few months to Facebook, MySpace or Google, which is looking to build its presence in social media.

On TechCrunch, several people share the same opinion. Santiago from Colombia says:

…there is such a thing as social network fatigue or saturation. Sure, some people may join Sonico because they got an invite from a friend, but those memberships will likely get abandoned as all roads eventually lead to Facebook or Myspace. I mean, in open social networks BIGGER IS NECESSARILY BETTER.

Also, what’s the added value of Sonico? I mean, Facebook is already in Spanish and has all kinds of applications and everyone and their mother has already joined. Why would anyone join Sonico?

Let me put this in perspective…. what would everyone say if suddenly someone came out with an ‘instant messenger for hispanics’ ? Everyone would say ” WTF? Hispanics can just use MSN or Y! messenger.” Exactly, it’s the same with social networks…we are no different from the rest of the world, we can just use FB [Facebook] or MySpace.

Are any of you using one of these new Spanish social networking sites? How does it compare with Facebook?

Those poor linguists over at Fundéu BBVA. They’re back and still tearing their hair out over the wide use of non-Spanish words in Spanish media. The last time it was over auto racing. Now it’s professional tennis. Here’s a recent sample news report from the French Open, with the offending extranjerismos in bold:

‘Nadal, tras un gran partido, ganó a Federer en el tie break. Los dos jugadores se hicieron break mutuamente antes de llegar al juego definitivo. No se definió el partido hasta el último set, en el que disputaron el tie break. Nadal sacó primero y logró un ace, contra el que nada pudo hacer Federer.

A continuación, Nadal consiguió un mini break, lo que le supuso la ventaja ante el suizo. El mallorquín dispuso de dos match point de ventaja. Desaprovechó el primero pero el segundo fue definitivo; Nadal golpeó con su drive y consiguió el punto que le dio la victoria.’

Fundéu BBVA says that there are Spanish words or phrases for practically all of those English terms. For example, they prefer manga instead of “set”; muerte súbita instead of tie break; romper de servicio instead of (service) break; saque directo instead of ace; punto de partido instead of match point. It’s also driving them nuts to hear Spanish-speaking commentators use words like “net,” “out,” and “deuce” instead of their Spanish equivalents red, fuera and iguales.

But there are some tennis terms that don’t have a short and tidy equivalent in Spanish. For example, the best Fundéu BBVA can up with to define a tennis “drive” is el golpe dado desde el lado en que el jugador sostiene la raqueta. Meanwhile their lengthy definition of a “let” is enough to stop any tennis match dead in its tracks. Here it is:

Cuando la pelota ha tocado la red y cae en la zona de saque hacia donde se sacaba y por tanto hay que repetir el punto.

Set. Match. Game over.

Here’s the thing, if Spanish sportswriters and sports commentators did make a conscious effort to use all the Spanish equivalents all the time, would their audience still fully understand what they were saying? I may be off base but also having that much English in the mix adds to the esnob appeal of the sport in Spain, I think. It also seems to me like many of these terms are so ingrained in the language of the sport, (like saying 30-love), it would be a little jarring to have them suddenly disappear. What do you guys think?

La ciudad de Esteco, a legend from Argentina.

Photo by MountLynx, used under license from iStockPhoto.com

Bolliscout. Queer. Gaylandia. These words and a couple thousand more make up the entries in the new Diccionario Gay Lésbico written by Félix Rodríguez González, a linguist from the University of Alicante.

According to news reports, it’s the world’s first ever dictionary about Spanish words and phrases used in reference to or among homosexuals. The dictionary covers more than 1,500 words and is being published by Gredos, the same publisher of the distinguished Maria Moliner dictionary, considered the most comprehensive dictionary ever written of the Spanish language. Prof. Rodríguez told Spanish media that he researched his book by hanging out in gay bars and other places of “ambiente gay” and passed numerous hours in online gay forums to find the most commonly and widely used terms among gays and lesbians.

What will be interesting to see is how many of the terms in his dictionary will still be valid in a few years. Also, his focus appears to be on the language and slang used among gay and lesbians in Spain and not in other Spanish-speaking countries. Anyway, it makes for fun reading. Not surprisingly, many of the words are taken directly from English (like gay, queer, drag queen) or are bastardizations of English words.

Here are a few definitions:

Agencia EFE: to be an outrageous gossip. Agencia EFE is the name of the Spanish news service which is an equivalent to Reuters and the Associated Press.

Bolliscout: This appears to be a mutation of the English word “boy scout.” The gay dictionary defines a bolliscout as a lesbian that goes out in a group looking for other lesbians.

Gaylandia: An imaginary place where gay people live happily without a care in the world. The example given is the Cheuca neighborhood in Madrid.

Ser del Sevilla y el Betis: to be bi (as in bisexual).

The José in question is José Moreno de Alba, president of the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua. Despite the prevalence of Spanglish in North America, Prof. Moreno doesn’t believe it is on its way to becoming a “real” stand-alone language.  Spanglish, he says, is too dependent on the words, structures and pronunciations of both English and Spanish to ever be considered a true language. A dialect, maybe, he says, but not a creole language, which by definition is a pidgin language that evolves into the native tongue of a community. Prof. Moreno believes that many Hispanics in the U.S. eventually wind up not having much close contact with the Spanish language due to a desire to be more fully-integrated in American society and so by the third generation no longer speak Spanish.

But isn’t language a tool for communication? By that definition, Spanglish is a real language, like it or not.

Las Gracias are a trio of Greek goddesses, daughters of Zeus, who represent joy, charm and beauty. (They are the three women next to Mercury, the only man in the above painting.) Isn’t it great that the Spanish word for “Thank you” is also a reference to three things that make life much nicer?

“Spring”(Primavera) by Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (but you know him as Botticelli.)

Gracias. It’s a little word that goes a long way. But there are times when you’d like to add a little more agradecimiento to the mix.

Here’s a list of phrases and expressions you can use when a simple “gracias” or “muchas/muchísimas gracias” doesn’t feel like enough.

More…

It took more than a week but Voices en Español is available once again over at iTunes. Yay!! A huge “THANK YOU” to podcaster extraordinare, Steve Eley, editor of Escape Pod, The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine. Steve saw a query I posted explaining my problem in a Yahoo podcasters forum. He took a close look at the guts of my podcast feed (that digital tool that enables iTunes to find and access podcasts) and identified exactly what was causing the service interruption. He then gave me detailed instructions on how to fix it. Bravo, Steve! Without him, I’d still be pulling my hair out over this since the only response I got from iTunes, (a customer service rep emailed me a link to the iTunes FAQs), wasn’t any help to me at all.

It’s funny how the best customer service these days comes from other customers!

 

 La noche de los feos: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Lloramos hasta el alba. Desgraciados, felices.

Full transcript here.

Photo: Jewelry Monster, Donna Lethal