¡Ándale!One of the most perplexing expressions in Mexican Spanish is ¡Ándale! Jorge Zendejas, being keenly aware of this, emailed me a request that we dedicate a whole column to this fascinating word that has caused more than one English-speaking eyebrow to rise in curiosity.As Mr. Zendejas notes, ¡Ándale! can have many meanings. The root word, of course, is andar, and like most basic verbs in any language, in and of itself it possesses a whole gamut of meanings, more than twenty in this case — and that’s not including idiomatic expressions. Its primary sense is that of getting from one place to another. One can andar on foot, in a car, or on a boat; a bird can andar volando (fly). Lyrics from a famous song read “Ando volando bajo,” which means “I’m flying low.” One can andar happy or sad, meaning he or she is happy or sad. When beating around the bush, one tends to andar por las ramas, and when one is totally frank, he or she no se anda con miramientos… The list could go on and on.
Our concern for today, however, is the peculiar construction ándale, with its variations ándele (formal discourse), ándenle (second person plural, formal and familiar), ándeles (another way of pluralizing ándale), ándili (the baby-talk pronunciation; extremely common), and — last but not least — órale, which really deserves a column all to itself. ¡Ándale! is most commonly used when one says goodbye to someone else. If a child were to announce, for example, that he was going to school, he might say “Ya me voy a la escuela,” and his mother could very well answer “¡Ándale, pues!”, the pues being a common addition in this context.
This connotes both recognition and acceptance, but it could also mean permission. If one’s daughter has been begging to go to a tardeada for the last four hours, one might eventually cave in with a resigned ¡Ándale, pues! But only after she has been using the same word as a ploy to get us to cave in, as so: ¡Ándale, papá, déjame ir! ¡Ándale, no seas malo! ¡Ándale, tú sabes que me porto bien…! (Come on, Dad, let me go! Come on, Dad, don’t be a spoiled sport! Come on, Dad, you know I’ll be good…!)
We also use ¡Ándale! when we want someone to hurry up. If a child is lagging behind, we often hear his or her mother imploring “¡Ándale, que se nos hace tarde!” (Hurry up! It’s getting late!) When we’re really in a hurry, we can repeat the ¡Ándale! up to three times.
Another common use of ¡Ándale! has to do with memory. If we are trying to remember something, it’s on the tip of our tongue, we can’t quite get a grip on the image, the word, the name and… all of a sudden someone comes up with it, we might very well blurt out a relieved ¡Ándale! ¡Eso es!
The exclamation ¡Ándale! is also used to indicate understanding or agreement. We might be having a friendly discussion with someone who is earnnestly outlining his point of view. Maybe we aren’t quite catching on to his reasoning, so we ask him to be a little bit clearer in his explanation. So he goes back and starts again. We he arrives at the crucial point of his argument, it all begins to come into focus and we would say ¡Ándale! Eso sí que tiene sentido. (I got you! That surely makes sense.) The expression ¡Órale! is ¡Ándale!’s first cousin, and it usually fits in to any of its uses, with the exception, perhaps, when asking for permission and saying goodbye. In those cases one prefers the more traditional ¡Ándale!
Nevertheless, ¡Órale! has recently acquired a sense of marvel or extreme surprise which goes beyond ¡Ándale! For example, if someone tells us the spinster school marm — who never uses makeup and has never been seen in either male or female company — has just been engaged to be married to a rich oil tycoon, we would definitely come out with a resounding ¡Órale!, most likely out of disbelief, first, and then pure admiration.
Many times ¡Órale! is pared down to a simple ¡ora!, and in this form it may also express smiling disbelief. Someone could be telling us a story, and at every unbelievable twist and turn we might come out with ¡ora! ¡ora!, as if to say “Yeah, sure!”
Summing up, ¡Ándale! can be used to say goodbye, to ask for permission, to give permission, to acknowledge someone is right, to have someone hurry up, and to let someone know they are right when they tell us something we couldn’t remember. ¡Órale! goes along those basic lines, with a couple of exceptions. So, ¡Ándenle! Use it in good health.
If you have a specific question you would like to ask me,
I would be happy to discuss it with you here in this coluumn.
Feel free to e-mail me at sandrocohen@gmail.com
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