We´re back for another installment of Misunderstanding Mondays. 

In Santiago there is a popular destination called Mercado Central.  It´s a beautiful old factory-type building that has been converted into an open-air den of seafood restaurants with fish mongers and vegetable stands along the periphery.  Because there are so many restaurants, competition is fierce and each one tends to employ one or more agressive head waiters who duke it out with each other to win diners in their chairs. 

A foreign exchange student with basic Spanish skills, we´ll call her Liz, went to the picturesque mercado to take some photos.  She was approached a few times but told the buzzing waiters that she wasn´t hungry and just wanted to take some photographs.  Much to her consternation, more and more men continued to approach her, asking her to their restaurant and talking to her, but she kept trying to brush them off, insisting that she wasn´t hungry.  They KEPT coming, and kept coming, in spite of her increasing annoyance and insistance that she didn´t want any food and was only there to take pictures.  By the end of 20 minutes she was so frustrated she just started yelling at all of them, and eventually had to give up on taking photos and stormed out.

The following week she relayed this story to her Spanish teacher and was asking whether it was a cultural thing that these men just wouldn´t leave her alone.  Turns out when she tried to brush them off what she thought she was yelling, "no tengo hambre" turned out to be "no tengo hombre"!  Whoops!  Apparently there were a lot of takers, and Liz was blushing for a week thinking of herself in the middle of the market yelling, "I don´t have a man!!  All I want is to take pictures!" This lessons serves to not only mind our p´s and q´s, but our a´s and o´s as well.  Do you have a story about trying to communicate when learning a language, but doing so badly or to an unintended but humorous effect?  Write to jenpeck@loogla.com and we´ll publish it. 

Suerte, chicos!

(Whether you ´tiene hambre´ or ´quiere hombre´ will determine which you see in this photo.)

We´re back for another installment of Misunderstanding Mondays. 

In Santiago there is a popular destination called Mercado Central.  It´s a beautiful old factory-type building that has been converted into an open-air den of seafood restaurants, with fish mongers along the periphery.  Because there are so many, competition amongst the restaurants is fierce and each one tends to employ one or more agressive head waiters who duke it out with each other to win diners in their chairs. 

A foreign exchange student with basic Spanish skills, we´ll call her Liz, went to the picturesque mercado to take some pictures.  She was approached a few times but told the buzzing waiters that she wasn´t hungry and just wanted to take some photographs.  Much to her consternation, more and more men continued to approach her, asking her to their restaurant and talking to her, but she kept trying to brush them off, insisting that she wasn´t hungry.  They KEPT coming, and kept coming, in spite of her increasing annoyance and insistance that she didn´t want any food and was only there to take pictures.  By the end of 20 minutes she was so frustrated she just started yelling at all of them, and eventually had to give up on taking photos and stormed out.

The following week she relayed this story to her Spanish teacher and was asking whether it was a cultural thing that these men just wouldn´t leave her alone.  Turns out when she tried to brush them off what she thought she was yelling, "no tengo hambre" turned out to be "no tengo hombre"!  Apparently there were a lot of takers.  This lessons serves to not only mind our p´s and q´s, but our a´s and o´s as well. 

Here's a great example of "hipocresía" and "contradicción" in action from the Argentine governement. Both of these words are considered cognates and are easy words to learn since they're a simple shift from their english versions 'hipocracy' and 'contradiction'.

These two cognates in particular are relevent in this case because the Argentine goverment has put a ban on importations (of books, electronics, etc.), making it exceedingly expensive to buy and maintain electronics within Argentina, yet Vice President Amado Boudou has tweeted this concerned and sympathetic message to the people with his imported iphone.

There is a growing love for riding a bicycle in the world, and with increasing congestion on the roads and air pollution, it's easy to see why!  Practice your spanish with some more reasons to love your bike!

Todos son buenos, pero "Sientes como que vuelas" es mi razón favorito.  No olvides tu casco!

Pay attention to spelling, as sometimes one letter can make all the difference! This fabulous play on words is the name of a mattress store in Bariloche, Argentina.

La colcha de tu madre... Get it??

Misunderstandings and miscommunications when learning #Spanish are all too common.  Because in Spanish there are lots of words that are cognates of words in English (such as proposition = proposición), plus there's the simple (funny, lazy) habit of many English speakers to put an 'o' at the end of a Spanish word.  Here's a funny story thanks to Angela Seita:

So one day I was talking with the 70 something year old woman, Gladys, I was living with about food in America.  I said something along the lines of "Comemos muchos preservativos en Estados Unidos". Her jaw dropped and she about keeled over from a heart attack. I went on to explain "it's not fresh". Little did I know that "preservativos" meant condoms in Argentina so I was basically telling her we eat a lot of rubbers!"

If Angela had used the word "conservantes" instead of "preservativos" ol' Gladys woulnd't have batted an eye.  Have you ever had a miscommunication in another language?  If you want to share or have your story featured, please send an email to jenpeck@loogla.com and we'll publish it!

If you’re thinking  of traveling somewhere to do an immersion course in Spanish, one of the key things to think about is the predominant accent spoken inyour preferred destination.  Argentina is a popular place to come and take classes, largely because Buenos Aires is a bustling city with thriving arts culture, famous parillas and fabulous ice cream, and of course the lure of the tango (which helps work off the extra calories).  But one thing that isn’t usually a consideration when choosing Argentina is the accent! 

It’s very helpful  to know, and something to consider, that when you come to Argentina that the people in Buenos Aires speak what they consider Rio Platense Castellano and their most definite peculiarity in pronunciation where the double l (ll) is pronounced as a “shh” sound instead with a soft a rather than the “yuh” sound used in so many other latin cultures, and even outside of Buenos Aires.  For example, lluvia, the word for rain, is pronounced ‘shoe-via’.  Pollo is ‘po-sho’ instead of ‘poy-o’.  If you can incorporate the “shh” into your accent in Buenos Aires (and try to drop a che or two) you’ll be quick on the path to earning points with the locals.