Malo como la carne de puerco
Believe it or not, this is about the tenth article we’ve dedicated to the careful cultivation of animal phrases, and — as you may have guessed — we’ve saved the best for the last: pigs.
In Spanish there are many names for a pig. I don’t know why, but you can call them puercos, marranos, cochinos, or cerdos. Take your pick. If you happen to call a person any one these terms, be aware that you are insulting that particular person. “No seas cochino,” a mother would say to her son when she caught him playing with his food. “¡Puerco, marrano!”, shouted the woman at the top of her lungs after she got flashed by a naked man covered only by a trench coat near the park. Pigs are dirty in just about any language, and Spanish is certainly no exception. But not all pig sayings have to do with filth, although they do have a distinctly negative flavor. Or at least they smack of things unpleasant, which is strange for countries so intent on eating pig meat. But let’s be fair: pigs are considered just as dirty in the us and gb, and they also eat’em up left and right, except when beef is being recalled, either because the animals were slaughtered while sick and couldn’t even stand up on their own four feet, or because they have mad cow disease.
Pigs, besides being dirty, are not popularly known for their intelligence or taste, which actually is not fair, because as we all saw in Babe, pigs are quite smart and definitely know a good thing when they see it. Be this as it may, there’s a saying in Spanish which is almost identical to one in English: es como echar margaritas [or perlas] a los puercos. “It’s like throwing daisies [or pearls] to the swine.” Pigs are probably dirty because human beings keep them penned up in places full of mud. In that scenario one can fully understand the saying, but it’s not necessarily fair to pigs.
Another clear insult to pigdom is this popular phrase: es malo como la carne de puerco (it’s bad like pig meat, or it’s as bad as pig meat). Strange… I personally refrain from porking out for many reasons, but the very same people who use this expression just love pig meat: bacon (tocino), ham (jamón), carnitas, chicharrón…
Which reminds me. There is a chicharrón saying that we shouldn’t leave out: ¡Aquí sólo mis chicharrones truenan! This means, literally, “Only my pigskins go crunch around here!”, meaning of course that I’m chief pig on the totem pole, and everybody has to look up to and obey me. Got it?Getting back to es malo como la carne de puerco, there is a parallel saying that means the same thing, but it has no pigs whatsoever: es feo (or malo) como pegarle a Jesús (or Dios). “That’s as ugly (or bad) as striking Jesus (or God).” If anyone can explain this contradictory situation — people calling pork bad when they love it so much — I’d like to hear it. But on the other hand, everyone knows that smoking — for example — is the pits, that it’s really terrible for your health, yet that doesn’t stop millions, if not zillions of people from smoking and dying from cancer, bronchitis, emphysema, and a whole host of other interesting diseases every year. (This is not a piece of innuendo for my smoking friends; we’re talking pigs today.)
When somebody gets on someone else’s case, I mean seriously gets on that person’s case, we say that he or she agarró a Fulano de su puerquito. Please use the diminutive. The literal translation doesn’t mean much, but it would go something like “he or she grabbed (took) So-and-So for (or as) his or her little pig.” The idea is that if you’re someone’s pig, in Spanish, you can be abused. This abuse is usually verbal and many times takes place in a jocular way. In a party, for example, if someone makes a joke about someone else and everybody laughs, maybe someone else will make another joke about this person; and then a third, and then a fourth… Well, by that time they’ve all agarraron a esa persona de su puerquito. Another way of saying it in pigless Spanish is: agarrar de bajada. Just imagine a Mack truck going downhill at about 80 miles an hour. If somebody decides to agarrar you de bajada, get out of the way!When things are going badly, we’re naturally not happy about it, but the straw that broke the camel’s back in English is when the sow twisted her tail in Spanish: fue entonces cuando la puerca torció el rabo. We use this expression to let people know when things went beyond the point of no return. A parallel and pig-free saying is ésa fue la gota que colmó el vaso (“that was the drop that made the glass overflow”).
One last saying before we put this column to bed: hacerle manita de puerco (a alguien). When we force someone to do something, we “make him a pig’s hand”, which makes no sense whatsoever. I think of it sort of like a half-nelson (llave nelson) in wrestling. If someone’s got you in that position, you’re likely to go along with it.
There are probably many sayings I haven’t included in these ten articles, and I’d be glad to include them if you send them along to the e-mail address listed below. Until then, pig out, but in moderation.
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