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vijayjohn wrote:What's making you go to Mexico City, if you don't mind me asking?
Also, did I ever mention La Reina del Sur? I've been finding it pretty helpful for listening comprehension and learning new (especially Mexican-specific) vocabulary I would have never, ever learned in Spanish class, like tu carnalito, el mugre güero, se ha vuelto muy pipirisnais y me cae re gordo (which apparently means 'your buddy, the dirty whitey, has become very classy, and I can't stand him').
Serafín wrote:I think I'd prefer something like "hell of a snob" to translate pipirisnáis. I'd also spell that regordo, since it's an intensive prefix...
eskandar wrote:vijayjohn wrote:What's making you go to Mexico City, if you don't mind me asking?
Just visiting for fun! I've never been and always heard wonderful things about it.
Not sure if you'd mentioned it, but I'll check it out. I see that it's set in Spain - do they mix in Castillian expressions or is all the dialogue pretty Mexican?
I knew carnal/ito and güero but not the rest. Another Mexican-specific expression that might be similar to pipirisnais is fresa - young, snobbish, upper middle class types, sort of like "burgers" in Pakistan if you're familiar with the term.
vijayjohn wrote:I've always wanted to take a trip to Mexico. When I was growing up, I felt like everybody got to go there and I never did (because my parents were all "but we don't know anybody there so how do we know we'll all be safe?") even though I spoke Spanish and they didn't! (But then for that matter, I'd like to take a trip to India again, too, and the last time I did that, I was almost half my current age, sooooo...).
eskandar wrote:Now that you're an adult, what's holding you back from taking a trip?
vijayjohn wrote:I'd love to meet you someday, too.
eskandar wrote:muletilla - catchphrase
codo - stingy (Mexican slang, aside from primary meaning of 'elbow')
colonia - neighborhood
Serafín wrote:eskandar wrote:muletilla - catchphrase
"Catchphrase" in English is quite a positive word, but muletilla in Spanish is somewhat negative. If you say somebody has a certain muletilla, you imply that they should get rid of it. I think WordReference's translation "pet phrase" is pretty good. To say "catchphrase", we normally use phrases such as cosa que dice todo el tiempo or frase que le gusta decir.
colonia - neighborhood
In El Salvador, a colonia is specifically a walled neighborhood with a modicum of collectively paid security. I suspect it
might also mean that in Mexico too. A "neighborhood" is referred to as a barrio or vecindario instead.
eskandar wrote:I think you're right. I heard it in a video that I think was indeed referring to a walled neighborhood. I wondered why I didn't know this word for "neighborhood" and had only heard barrio before - answer: because I didn't grow up around walled neighborhoods.
eskandar wrote:lodo, fango - mud [is there any difference between these two?]
eskandar wrote:Arabic: I haven't been doing much though I'm dying to get back to working on it. Saim mentioned Readlang in his log so I decided to check it out. I went to the site's Arabic library and chose a text rated C1: احسن القصص. Granted, it's one of the stories of the prophets and that kind of vocabulary is probably my greatest strength in Arabic, but I read the whole first page with great ease and without needing to click on a single word. Either they rated the text much harder than deserved (which is what I think - it should be B1 or B2) or my reading level has reached C1 (doubtful). In any case Readlang didn't appeal to me much so I think I'll go back to reading a book with a dictionary (or dictionaries, as the case tends to be for Arabic) when I can spare the time.
Serafín wrote:eskandar wrote:lodo, fango - mud [is there any difference between these two?]
lodo is much more common.
Saim wrote:Curioso, yo habría dicho fango, seguramente por influencia del catalán fang.
Le he preguntado a un amigo barcelonés como traduciría fang al castellano, y ha dicho que lo más comun sería barro, siendo fango más bien literario. Cuando le he sugerido la palabra lodo, me ha dicho "no sé la diferencia, pero es algo distinto" (es catalanoparlante, tal vez sea por eso). ¿Se usa esta palabra en El Salvador también? ¿Hay algun matiz en el significado?
Saim wrote:I only use Readlang as a built-in browser dictionary. I haven't bothered with any of the texts they have in their library or the flashcards it automatically makes from the words you look up.
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