day nine - Spanish curse words

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This is an insomania-driven post. I’ve decided that rather than toss and turn in bed its much better to make productive use of insomnia hours, particularly if I don’t have to be anywhere in the morning.

I’m in luck, though: insomnia in Spanish is “insomnio” ("tengo insomnio") that’s so easy that my MS Word just tried to automatically change the word back to “insomnia”. Watch it Bill Gates! I’m speaking Spanish now.

[Note: little piece of trivia about “Bill Gates” (hey, its 3 in the morning and I have insomnia). You know why the BeeGees are called “the BeeGees”? It’s the “B” and the “G” from “Bill Gates”. I’m not kidding with you. But its not that Bill Gates. Apparently a DJ in Australia named “Bill Gates” was the first one to discover them back in the 60s. So there you have it.]

I’m going to make it easy on myself today. A friend of Claudia’s suggested that in order to really learn Spanish I need to learn the “curse words” – “palabrotas” ( as opposed to “palabras” for just “words”).

We’ve already learned “damn” on a prior day is “carajo” as in

“me no importa un caraja” – I don’t give a damn

Apparently one can also use “joder” in the same context which is a slightly more benign version of f***. So “me no importa un joder”. [update: I'm told this make no sense for "joder"]

Of course there are some very important uses of this in business settings:

“cállate ya ¡joder!” – shut the f*** up!

And, of course, when I go to my favorite dictionary writer (see day 4), he has some choice usages:

“ellos a hacerse ricos y los demás a joderse” = “they get rich, and the rest of us can go to hell!”

So from that I gather, “Rico” is “rich” and “los demas” is “the rest of us”. I suppose also (using what I learned the other day, one can say “ellos a hacerse ricos y lo otro no importa” (they get rich and the rest don’t matter) )

“Mierda” is “Shit”. As in “me no importa un mierda”

Again, a usage from my favorite Spanish-English dictionary writer:

“tu hermana es una mierda” – your sister is a shit.

I really wish I could interview that guy. I KNOW he has some stories.

I’m not even going to tell you what he has to say about “puta”. My kids might read this blog some day and it would be offensive.