Spanish Swear Words and Slang


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Europe » Spain » Valencian Community » Alicante
September 3rd 2008
Published: September 4th 2008
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Beach in AlteaBeach in AlteaBeach in Altea

You know you are all jealous.
Well, today was our first day of our intensive Spanish course which we take for 3 hours a day, 5 days per week. I was placed in the middle of three possible levels (they divided ourselves up based on the results of our placement exam) which I consider an accomplishment seeing as I haven't taking a course in Spanish in almost 2 years and most of the people here are majoring in Spanish(more about the intelligence of my fellow Americans later on in the post). The class does not seem as if it is going to be very difficult and as my grades from abroad are going to be pass, fail on my williams transcript, I am not very worried at least about this first class. Part of the class was spent going over some colloquial expressions such as "vale" which Spaniards say about 2-3 times in every sentence, equivalent to our Ok? or yea?!, venga! (come on), and we also earned a couple of expletives to round out the lesson. Some expressions of anger in Spanish include "puta de madre"(which isn't considered very bad unless you say tu puta madre, in which you are referring to that specific person's "whore of a mother." this is considered one of the greatest insults in spain), puta de mierda, joder(f***), and "callate cono" which means shut the F up. My favorite part of the lesson is when we learned the word "guiri", which is like a gringo in Mexico and used to refer to a foreign looking person in Spain. Me and one other girl were told that we looked the most "guiri" out of anyone in the class because we were blond, fair skinned, and blue eyes. ( I had one blonde moment the other day when I shocked myself by accident trying to use my converter, brought back memories of the electric fence in Ireland) In my opinion, some of the other American girls are more guiri than me, not in looks but in behavoir. I swear if I hear "omg, like, lets go to the beach and get like so tan" or "nuttuhh" one more time I am going to go crazy. Some girls are more interested in going to the beach every afternoon than doing anything else. Makes me appreciate the caliber of the students at williams more.
I try not to hang out with the other Americans in big groups a lot. I have made a lot of European friends from Ireland, Italy, Latvia, the UK, New Zealand(not europe I know), as well as met people from Morocco, Columbia, and Argentinia. Everyone is super friendly and a lot of the EU students who spend a semester here end up not wanting to leave and getting work either teaching English or working in bars/clubs.(so basically I have the inside scoop on all the best places to go out at night and all the tips for getting around the city) I also learned a Spanish toast which goes as follows:
Arriba!(Everyone raises their drinks up in the air)
A bajo!(Everyone brings their drinks down to touch the table)
A centro! (Everyone brings there drinks into the center of the circle)
A dentro! (Every drinks!)
It basically translates to up, down, into the middle, and down the hatch (adentro means inside).
Adios por ahora!




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