¡Qué pasó, qué pasó!
I was overjoyed on finding out that Mr. Hernán Zenarosa, from the Philippines and presently living in Colonia Cuauhtémoc, was encouraged to tutear his receptionist, Sylvia, after having read last week’s column entitled “¡Quiúbole!”. But the encouragement is really for me. Perhaps the casual reader doesn’t realize how important it is for a columnist to receive e-mail. I’d like to take the opportunity at this time to thank publicly all those who have written to comment on Joy of Spanish and ask questions. That’s what keeps a writer going.
There are at least two usages that didn’t make it into the last column for lack of space. The first has to do with ¿Qué pasó? (What happened? or What’s up?, depending on the context.) The second is a peculiar use of ¡Quiubo! Neither are greetings in these new contexts.
When someone insinuates foul play on our part, most likely as a joke or an albur, our surest countermove would be to come back immediately with a resounding “¡Qué pasó, qué pasó!”, more as an exclamation of absolute innocence than as a question. Take this dialogue for example:
—Susana quiere ir a ver la nueva película sobre Beethoven. ¿Por qué no la invitas? A menos que no te gusten las mujeres...
—¡Qué pasó, qué pasó!
(“Susana wants to go and see the new movie about Beethoven. Why don’t you ask her out? Unless you don’t like women...”)
As one might gather, there really is no translation for this “¡Qué pasó, qué pasó!” And one should also take note that this phrase is almost always used with its repetition. In other words, you say qué pasó twice. A common variation, however, is to say “¡Psss...! ¿qué pasó?” Well, we could translate the phrase into English, but it wouldn’t be polite. One would have to go along the lines of “Something-or-other you” — the something-or-other being the “F” word. But in Spanish one need not worry because “¡Qué pasó, qué pasó!” is perfectly polite and may be said in mixed com¬pany (even around men, my feminist friends would say). To put it briefly, it’s a perfectly legitimate comeback to something said in jest, not in anger.
In a future article we’ll talk a little about the albur, a venerated linguistic institution in Mexico that no foreigner can afford to ignore. If he does, it would be at his own risk.
As far as the other use of ¡Quiubo! is concerned, we should first remember that it is a colloquial, non-standard contraction of qué and hubo. ¿Qué hubo? literally means “What occurred?” Last week we said that as a greeting it usually means “What’s up” and that its longer form ¡Quiúbole! or ¡Quióbole! means more or less the same thing, only more emphatically. There is another use though. When having an argument with someone, a good way to gain the upper hand is to rattle off one’s refutation and then top the whole thing off with a quick ¡Quiubo! or ¡Quiúbole! meaning “And whattaya say to that? Ha!” Let’s invent a dialogue:
—Siempre serás un fracaso como autor.
—¿Fracaso? Mi último libro salió apenas hace tres meses y ya van cinco reimpresiones de 10,000 ejemplares cada una, está a la cabeza de la lista de los libros más vendidos y ha sido un éxito de crítica rotundo. ¡Quiubo!
(Translation: “You’ll always be a failure as an author.” // “A failure? My last book came out no more than three months ago and it’s already gone through five 10,000 copy reprintings, it’s on top of the best-seller list, and it’s been an absolute critical success. So whattaya say to that! Ha!”)
Neither of these usages is particularly aggressive or offensive. They are basically good humored and should be used in this way. If one wanted to be aggressive and offensive, there are a million ways of going about it, but I don’t think they can be discus¬sed here in this column. But if you’re not sure if something is polite or not, just write me an e-mail, and I’m sure I’ll be able to find a way of discussing it without offending anyone.
If you would like to know more about any idiomatic expressions you may have heard,
or about any Spanish-language difficulties,
feel free to contact me at sandrocohen@gmail.com
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