Yesterday in Spanish class, we were watching a video of a popular Spanish sitcom called Camera Cafe. Similar to the office, the entire show is seen through a "hidden camera" at an office coffee machine, and throughout the workday you see the different characters' interactions during their often over-extended breaks. It's pretty corny, but funny.
Anyway, so that we could even have a chance of understanding them, Julia gave us a list of about twenty colloquial phrases that we would hear in the show before watching it. This included get trashed (ir puesto), puke (echar la pota), and laze around (tocarse los huevos).
Now, for those of you that are Spanish speakers, the image conjured up but the last one may not directly correlate to the meaning. We found it really funny to hear our young, sprightly female teacher saying "Oh yeah, I often just hang around playing with my balls."
Also, Spanish TV has no profanity rules. This show is broadcast from 9:30-10pm on most weeknights (dinnertime, the equivalent of 6:30-7pm in the US), yet included this vocab in addition to coño and joder (you can look those up). We had an enlightening conversation about profanity laws, basically realizing that in Spain, there just plain aren't any. None of the locals that we've spoken to on the issue can believe that you can't say "shit" on television in the United States.
On a slightly unrelated note, Julia also mentioned that it's not uncommon in Spain for people, before tests, to take a shot of liquor to loosen their nerves. Come on, tómate un chupito!
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1 comment:
It's nice to be out of puritan America isn't it?
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