random linguistic notes

i have been trying to colombian-ify my spanish.  i guess my first priority should be to spanishify my spanish, i.e. study more so i don't make a fool of myself by going into a store and starting to say "can i have..." and realize i don't actually know the word, and then i'm stuck finishing lamely with "that" or spend ten minutes beating around the bush trying to describe it "well, it's a small grey thing that you put in the wall, and if you have an electrical chord with three arms, but your wall only has two holes for them, it changes it and makes it work..."  but i figure using more colombian terms can't hurt with making me fit in more.  maybe then if i mess up my spanish, people will think i'm not foreign, just stupid.

part of my plan of attack is pronunciation.  in colombia, the double ll is pronounced almost like the chinese zh, or a cross between an english j and an sh.  (if you put your tongue in position to say sh but say j instead).  it feels really strange to say basic things like botella, ella, calle pronounced like botezha, ezha, cazhe.  sometimes i go overboard and people don't understand me at all.  but sometimes people understand me better and treat me more like a local when i pronounce things like that.

i've also been trying to learn more colombian slang.  i've found some lists online, we got a few lists during teacher training collected from past volunteers, and i've been studying my fabulously helpful and entertaining book d!rty spanish.  a number of the words, unsurprisingly, have something to do with drugs or lawlessness.  creepy means marijuana.  as in the inspired lyrics of the song that comes on the radio every 10 minutes "la niña quiere creepy creepy. por que la pone happy happy."  also, interestingly enough, the word bomba (lit. bomb) means balloon.  gives new meaning to the song "99 luftballons...

apparently, i use a lot of mexican slang.  i didn't even know i'd picked it up, but i guess most of the words my lovely roommate rosita taught me during my summer in guadalajara were pretty region-specific.  for example, qué chido no mames, no manches, qué padre, mande, órale, ándale.  i've been using them here, and sometimes it flies and sometimes it doesn't, but it does nothing to help me fit in.  [fun fact: rosita would never tell me what the direct translation of 'no mames' was, just that i should use 'no manches' in polite company, the same way people use 'heck' for 'hell.'  well i finally looked it up.  it sort of means 'don't suck.' ahem ;) ] so anyway, i've been trying to replace that with colombian slang.

i think it's really cute that random people i talk to, like shopkeepers and crossing guards, call me muñeca, mi amor, reinita and such.  they're not hitting on me—everyone does it, guys girls young old.  it's just kinda how it's done here.  i kinda wish people were affectionate like that to strangers in the US.  it gives a warmish vibe to the most mundane of interactions.

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i've also been thinking about the way religion finds its way into language.  specifically, how spanish and Catholic go together like bread and butter, but there are a number of linguistic oddities that give spanish a decidedly non-Catholic flavour.  for example, the word for God, Dios, looks plural. 

i'm not really sure why that is.  it could be related to the royal we.  or to the fact that God refers to himself in the plural in the old testament ("let us make man in our image, after our likeness" and don't eat the fruit or else"ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil," etc.  that pluralization is in itself the subject of a lot of debate; some people think it speaks to pre-monotheistic creation myths)  but i think it's interesting considering that one of the main reasons Catholicism caught on in latin america was a sort of syncretism with local polytheistic religions.  the saints matched up nicely with local dieties (note the plural there).  i doubt protestant conquistadors could have converted the continent.


another note is on the word adiós, which of course means goodbye.  the meaning is closer to "go with God," but it literally means "go to God."  considering how crazily most colombians drive, i always find this a little disconcerting. 


another religious note is the common spanish phrase "ojalá que," which means hopefully, if only, i hope that, god willing, i wish that, etc.(as in the awesome song "ojalá que llueva café")  it comes from the arabic phrase, "inshaa'Allaah," which means god willing.  i guess it probably hopped over the border back in the day, it's only a few miles from southern spain to morocco.  still, i think it's kind of darkly funny that after all the conflict in spain between catholics and muslims, people not only in spain but in all of their former colonies are running around saying "ojalá que."  take that, isabel, ferdinand, and the inquisition!


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and i shall close with an amusing linguistic faux pas: i was talking about my job to a fellow i met at the gre exam, and he asked me about discipline in the classroom.  i said that it's a bit rough, and was trying to explain that part of the reason is that a lot of the students at my school are there because they were kicked out of other schools.  i wasn't really sure how to express the phrasal verb "kicked out," but gave it a shot with:   

"pues, parte del problema es que muchos de los estudiantes asistieron a otros colegios, pero por problemas de disciplina, los directores tiraron a los estudiantes afuera." 

he gave me a an odd look. "expelaron" he corrected.  then he said delicately "aquí en colombia, la palabra tirar tiene... dos significados." 

"tirar una pelota..." i said, miming throwing a ball.  "y... ¿qué mas?"  he raised his eyebrows.  i gasped, covering my mouth with my hands in shock.  "¡ay, no!"

so apparently, tirar, to throw, has a number of meanings.  throw, throw out, pull out, withdraw, extract, expel, eject... you get the idea ;)