Terms of endearment
Gary Case, who has been living here in Mexico City for five years now, has asked where he might find a dictionary of contemporary popular expressions used in Mexico. Unfortunately, we don’t have the equivalent of Eric Patridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, or even Tony Thorne’s The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, or any of the ten or twenty other dictionaries of this type which can be found presently in the U.S. or U.K. marketplace. Nevertheless, I have seen from time to time modest booklets that attempt to record present non-standard usage of Mexican Spanish. I promise to keep my eyes out and my ears peeled for these bibliographical rarities; the readers of unasletras will be the first to know where and how to purchase a copy. Who knows? There may even be a glossary available electronically on the Internet.
Ricardo Frohmader, on the other hand, who also lives here in the city, inquires as to whether Eugenia Montalván plans on publishing a book containing a compendium of this very same “Joy of Spanish” column. It seems the marketing department is already looking into the possiblity, and I’d be more than happy to put together a volume based on these columns, so long as it proves to be an informative and — above all — enjoyable read. I’m working on it. Getting back to Gary Case’s letter, he asks if there are “Mexican-Spanish equivalents for current US slang (i.e. ‘computer geek,’ ‘out of the loop,’ ‘baby boomer/generation X,’ or even the older ‘bummer’ or ‘jerk.’ I work a lot with jóvenes but don’t have the time to hang out (another example). Any suggestions?”
Well, actually, hanging out is about the best suggestion I can make. You see, most non-standard usage comes about through a certain spontaneous combustion that occurs within the culture of those who coin it. Our reader asks about “computer geek,” for example, which is a phrase particularly beholden to U.S. culture, and the word geek itself has had its own evolution.
Mexico, being so close to the U.S., tends to borrow this sort of expression directly from English. In this area, the most commonly used word is the well known “nerd,” pronounced the way it is spelled in Spanish, to rhyme with “scared.” A nerd is someone who studies a lot, is very good at programming, and basically doesn’t have a life, or whose life seems to revolve around computers (or books, heaven help us).
“To be out of the loop” is a good metaphor for saying that one is neither informed about certain events nor has any say in the way things are done, especially when the opposite was formerly true. There is no exact colloquial translation of this phrase, but there are equivalents to say “I’m out of the loop”: Estoy fuera del juego, Ya valí gorro [o madre], or simply: Ya valí (one understands the word left out). If the idea is that one has been cut off, he could say: Me cortaron or Me dejaron chiflando en la loma, especially if one has been cut off and left in a dangerous or embarrassing position. Another colorful, metaphoric way of saying this in Spanish is Me dejaron colgado de la brocha. One can imagine his or herself painting a wall on top of a ladder; someone comes along and knocks the ladder out from underneath us. That’s why we are hanging on to our brush, only the brush isn’t hanging on to anything. Like in the cartoons, we can remain suspended in mid air only until we actually realize there is nothing underneath us. Then we fall. (Remember Wiley E. Coyote and Road Runner.) “Baby boomer” is a particularly U.S. linguistic concoction referring to the generation that was conceived in the years following the GI’s return to the States after World War II. There is no equivalent in Mexico, but many of these baby boomers are “yuppies”, and in Mexico these yuppies are called yupis, and are understood to be rich, young professionals, more interested in the Bolsa de Valores and their own selfish interests than in the country’s well being. Alas, there are many unflattering home-grown terms for these people, none of which would look nice in print.
The “generation X” phenomenon is similar to the “baby boomer” circumstance: it’s a U.S. problem, and has little to do with Mexico. We’ve already had several “X generations,” left out economically, ill prepared professionally, misunderstood politically, almost totally vulnerable spiritually… In a country so terribly polarized along the rich-poor axis, it doesn’t make much sense to argue about a “generation X” when 80% of the people don’t have access to three or even two good meals a day. Many of these people only eat meat once a week, when they’re lucky.
“Bummer” is easy. Everybody has bummers, even yupis and candidates for belonging to Generation X. The most common equivalent is mala onda. When something goes wrong, he or she says: ¡Qué mala onda! or simply ¡Mala onda! If we want someone not to be a drag or a “pain,” we would say: ¡No seas mala onda!
The perfect Mexican translation for “jerk” is tonto, imbécil, estúpido, or the “p” word that ends with the letters “ejo” and has the letters “end” in between. This particular word can not appear in polite websites. At least I think it can’t. But in case it can, or if maybe it slips through, I’m talking about pendejo, pendeja.
And one last word about “estúpido.” Be careful! It’s not as innocent as it is in English. In the U.S. or U.K. it’s no big deal to say “Don’t be stupid,” but in Spanish estúpido is at least five times stronger. Use tonto, which can even be a term of endearment, as in No seas tonto, mi amor.
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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