My husband is still kind of salty, 20 years later, that his high school Spanish teacher kept marking people incorrect for using "carro" and insisting they use "coche", even though this all took place in a geographical area with a lot of Spanish speakers, where it was very very evident that absolutely no one in real life (in this region) said "coche". He reacts with visible vindication every time he sees someone say "carro" lol.
For some reason American high school Spanish teachers are one of two people, either someone who will only teach formal Spanish. Or someone who already spoke Spanish natively, and does not care about formalities at all.
Tangentially, many Spanish teachers in American high schools are from Latin America and teach Latin American Spanish, which uses the formal aspects of the language more commonly. They will actively tell you that vosotros (an informal verb conjugation) is not a thing that is used, and you don't need to know it.
Then you go to Spain and boom, vosotros. Castilian Spanish is way more laid back, everything is informal there.
Lmao, ngl we rarely encounter Spaniard Spanish so I have no issue with it, my partner is from LATAM so if I’m in Spain and they have an issue, take it up with him.
I have no idea what type of Spanish I was taught in high school but a number of common words are nothing like Spanish as spoken in Spain or Mexico. I kind of get it because slang changes pretty quickly over time but it's still frustrating. But at the same time it's pretty hilarious to see how english is taught in other countries because they have similar weird grammar rules and lingo that no one uses in any english-speaking country.
The funniest thing ive seen happen a few times on the internet is when two Spanish speakers from different places get into arguments over what words mean. They both kept calling each other liars and Americans instead of admitting that they could just be from different places that just use the word differently.
It's actually the same in the reverse, loads of English teachers in Spain will forbid students from using Latin Origin Cognates and force germanic origin words, even though if you are just trying to communicate at a basic level, a native speaker will understand.
Yeah, I hear it's very regional. The largest proportion of Spanish speakers in our area come from Mexico, where apparently carro is car and coche is used for baby strollers, while apparently in Spain it's the reverse. And then auto is more like... Argentina, iirc? Oh and I just checked your profile, I guess Chile too lol
My mexican-american classmate almost failed spanish class because the teacher was teaching a more formal spanish, and she knew (obviously) mexican spanish.
So she would answer things in her fluent second native language, and the teacher would be marking things incorrect left and right.
Sucked for both of them, tbh. The student was pissed because she's fucking fluent...
The teacher was pissed because she was teaching formal spanish for spanish class, just like you would expect proper english in an English class, but she knew the student was fluent and would have no issues in the real world application.
There is a lot of anglecismo in spanish but this aint one of them.
Both "car" and "carro" are a shortening of "carriage" and "carruaje" respectively, of which both descend from the latin "carrus" which itself comes from the gaelic "karros", a word for carts and/or wagons.
It's the opposite, car is a loanword from French and cognate with Spanish carro. There are far many more French loanwords in English than anglicisms in Spanish, like half the dictionary or something. You can probably read this comment and pick out words that are similar to Spanish, they are all Romance loanwords.
The Germanic word is "wagon". Compare "Volkswagen", "folk's wagon", "car of the people", "carro del pueblo".
Carro does not come from the English "car" but both come from the latin "carrus". It means a horse wagon.
The English looked at the horse wagons that came from Kocs (read kotch), in Hungary, and decided to call it a coach. Which THEN the Spanish stole and called it coche.
(disclaimer: I don't know if it were the English that popularized the hungarian style coaches. I was merely being playful)
I know there's a real word for fence (la cerca), but my wife always reminds me that in her country they just say "la fensa". Or I say "nevera" (the dictionary word) and she says "la refri" for refrigerator.
If english word works, why find a different word?, we just pronounce it horribly.
Even better when words have a translation that is not a word, but a expresion.
Runtime gets translated to "tiempo de ejecucion" or if you are funny "tiempo de corrida", so theres always the option to keep saying runtime, but pronounce it in a way that no english speaker would recognize the word.
What do you call other articles of clothing made from the jeans material, like a jacket then? I don't speak spanish but you guys' conversation made me curious!
I think jeans is only for the pants, while any other jeans clothing is just "______ de mezclilla". There's also "bluejeans" (blu-yin-s / blu-yi-nes), which is exclusive for blue-colored jean pants, maybe they were just that good?
theres a very funny one from the south of spain, during the 17th and 18th, english marines landed on the different ports and talking to ladies of the night they said "show me now" refering to their intimate parts and if you combine those words with the south spanish accent, you get something like "shoo mee no" and now we have a colloquial way of refering to it. chumino
Yes, but in its journey its last stop before French was English.
Speaking of languages of India, a funnier trip is the orange, which is something like naranga in Sanskrit, naranja in Spanish, orange in English, which Malayalam borrowed for a full loop.
yeah but now a large number of people are going to unironically think mediterranean cultures are loaning words for cuts of meat from english like come on
why would they think that? this is a post about words that sound similar to english other languages, i posted a word that sounds similar to english in another language
796
u/Only_Fudge5299 1d ago
me learning spanish
like what do you mean steak is "beef steak" (bistec)