Words Fail Me: Legend of Zorro

Sometimes a single word in one one language can represent multiple words in another.
Esperar, for example, can mean
1.) to wait for
2.) to hope
3.) to expect
4.) to look forward to

Seriously? Way to mess me up, Spanish.

Come on. Different concepts here. Maybe you expected me to be a slackass and take three weeks to write this post, but you were hoping I'd put something up today. Or not. Fair enough. Were you just waiting to hear from me, or were you looking forward to it? See? Different. So I'm never quite sure if I'm expressing the subtle nuances with that single Spanish word. I feel like I have to clarify. Granted, I'm often not sure if I'm expressing blatant, simple-ass distinctions either, but whatever.

Typical phone call between me and the esposo:

Him: ¿Dónde estás?  (Where are  you?)

Me: En la parada. (At the bus stop.)  Esperando Godot.
      Bueno, "esperando-waiting for" Godot ... no "esperando-expecting" him.  

(See? Told you. I've got jokes now.)

Not the same.

This happens a lot with animal words, especially animals that aren't very common in Latin America.

Moose and elk: different animals, right? Bzzzzt! Not in Costa Rica, where they're both called alce.

Hawks and falcons are both called halcón.

Squirrels and chipmunks? Ardilla.

Foxes and skunks are both zorro here.

What the hell, people?

In the dictionary, "fox" is zorro, "skunk" is mofeta or zorrillo, and all is right with the world. But that's standard Spanish. The Spanish of dictionaries and textbooks. Of logic. The Spanish of other countries where I don't live. Tico Spanish is a whole'nuther animal. In Costa Rica, the dictionary means jack because haha, foreigner! Gotcha.

You can talk about a whole'nuther animal in Costa Rica if you want, but you're going to use the name of this here animal when you do it.

Hold on, my cat is barking at something. Hush, Rover.

So one night, the esposo and I were walking home from the bus stop. It was pretty dark, but it was a clear, starry night with a full moon limning the coffee fields and lending a Harlequin-worthy, romantic glow to the whole scene. It also backlit the bats zipping about, so visions of Satan's winged minions tangled in my hair kind of killed the romance for me, but still. (Spare me the infomercial about bats not bothering humans. We've been over this. You walk your dog past that tree on the corner with its magic -- and possibly hallucinogenic -- fruit that transforms them into deranged, dive-bombing defenders of the harvest, and then come talk to me.)

So we're strolling leisurely along, because the esposo is a stroller, a saunterer, and I'm looking up at the moon, trying to ignore the occasional shadow flitting across its face, when the esposo says,

Mira, un zorro! (Look, a fox!)

I looked, but it had already slipped into the coffee field. I wondered if the moon was bright enough for a photo, foxes being prettier than bats and less interested in my hair. I fumbled for my camera.

Me (in Spanish): Where did it go?

Esposo: That way. Into the coffee field.

Me: I can't believe I missed it! It would be such a beautiful picture. I think the moon's bright enough.

Him: Why do you want a picture of a fox? It's one of the ugliest animals.

Me: What? How can you say that? They're gorgeous animals -- that beautiful fur and tail!

Him: [derisive snort] The fur is ugly. It's practically bald. And the tail is the ugliest part of all. It has the tail of a rat. 

photo: Olga Gladysheva

I actually stopped walking. How was I married to someone who found a fox, of all animals, ugly? I mean, if foxes were ugly, what next? Were giraffes on his ugly list? Wombats? Where the hell did I fall, for that matter? Foxes do not belong on the ugly list. In the 70s, your crush was "a fox" instead of a hottie. And that whole Mask of Zorro thing? Hello, Antonio Banderas. Zorro. Foxy. Lordy. I rest my case.

Me: Who ARE you? What kind of person thinks a fox is ugly? And if their tails are so ugly, why do people make coats and ... and ... those things you wear around your shoulders ... out of them?  Cómo se dice "stole"?

[Fruitless, exasperating side discussion about the word "stole".]

Him: No one would make a coat or ... anything out of this ugly animal. Much less its rat tail.

By this time, I'm actually annoyed. He's obviously as demented as the bats. I've married a fox-hater. Everyone knows foxes don't have ...

Me: Why do you keep saying it has a rat tail?

Him: Because they're like big rats. Rats in trees.

Me: Trees? Foxes don't climb trees.

Him: Of course they do. Zorros pelones (bald foxes) do. They use their ugly tails. 

And that's how I learned that in Costa Rica, a zorro is not only a fox, not only a skunk, it's a freaking possum as well.

What the hell? Wasn't expecting that. (Or looking forward to it, or hoping for it, or ...)

I'd learned possum as zarigüeye. The dictionary said so. You all know where I'm going with that. Ha-fucking-ha, foreigner! Gotcha!

When pressed, the esposo admitted you can differentiate with descriptors:
zorro-zorro = fox
zorro pelón = possum (bald fox)
zorro hediondo = skunk (foul-smelling, stank-ass fox)

I don't know why people don't differentiate all the time, but I know one thing: I am not even asking about badgers or weasels.

Words Fail Me: Batshit Loco

When you learn a foreign language later in life *ahem*, words that sound similar can mess you up and make you sound like an idiot. When I lived in Hungary, I was constantly mixing up szőnyeg (carpet, rug) and szúnyog (mosquito). I would say dumb, but apparently amusing things like, "Urgh, these carpets keep biting me!" or "Take that mosquito out and shake it."

And you guys already know about my little mix up with preservantes and preservativos. But let's not dwell on that.

One time the esposo and I were down south, visiting one of my cuñados (really, it's so much easier than "brothers-in-law") and his family.  I love it there. They have a nice little porch where we hang out in hammocks with ice-cold beer of an evening. Ice cold because they literally put ice in the beer here. Not even kidding. I drink mine gringo style, no ice, because I don't like to water my beer. Just put that bad boy in the freezer for a bit.  Guys, I cannot express how much I'm loving the heat after the Seattle years. Where we live, in the Central Valley, it's actually not that hot. It's hot at my cuñado's house. You sweat. You take cold showers. You sleep in your skivvies with the fan on high, and kick off the sheet. And there is nothing like heat to make you appreciate the qualities of an ice-cold beer. Even estilo gringo, without the ice.

Hammock, beer, banana trees, good company ... what more do you need?

So after a long day of eating, relaxing, and drinking, we were all out on the porch for more drinking and relaxing. We'd just made our way back up from the river, where we'd gone to watch the sun set, commune with the neighbor's cattle, and get attacked by some pissed-off army ants after stepping on their anthill in flip-flops. Okay, that last part was only me, but whatever. It was a beautiful night.

So we're relaxing and sipping, watching the moon rise, when I notice something zipping back and forth overhead. A whole lot of somethings. Silent somethings. No cheerful birdsong or, in the case of parrots, obnoxious grawking. These were no feathered friends.

They were bats.

bats, lying in wait on the side of a tree

Now these were early days, my first year, back before that weird little tree in the farmer's squash field on the corner had bloomed with its seasonal batnip. I still don't know whether it was flowers or fruit that drew them, but that tree sang some kind of siren song that only those bats with their damned echolocation could hear. It was like crystal meth to a junkie. McDonald's to a gringo. You always hear about how bats don't bother people, how our fear of them is irrational, how they've gotten a bad rap. I believed all of that.

Until the little tree let loose its crack blossoms.

Those bats became territorial. Taking my dog, Batman (no relation), for his nightly constitutional was like running the gauntlet through a cloud of winged Cujos. In fact, wasn't it actually a bat that gave Cujo rabies in the first place? Poor Cujo probably lived near one of these trees. Those suckers actually dive-bombed me. They didn't give two shits about mosquitos, they were on the attack. Even Batman was a little spooked by his vespertilionine brethren, and he was a calm dog. I took to wearing a sweatshirt with the hood tied tight. After that first season, someone cut down the little tree before it bloomed again. I guess I wasn't the only bat bait out there. I was enormously relieved but also a little sad, because every once in a while, when the tree wasn't in bloom, an owl would perch there, watching me and Batman as we walked by, and I didn't see him anymore after that.

But back to our story, which takes place before the little tree bloomed and I learned what evil lurked in the hearts of bats. So I'm on the porch, soaking up the delicious heat, enjoying my cold beer in the moonlight, listening to the conversation from my hammock. An idyllic night if ever there were one. Wanting to make use of the animal vocabulary I'd just learned in my handy book, 6,000+ Essential Spanish Words, I nonchalantly say,

Look, bats!

Everyone stops talking to look at me. I helpfully point up at the sky, illustrating my keen observation.

A beat. Then everyone bursts out laughing. Great. I know what that means.

What did I say? 

They all chimed in, laughing their asses off, practically choking on their ice:

Look, womanizers!

Typical. Turns out the vocabulary book said murciélago ... not mujeriego.


-----------------
cuñado - brother-in-law  (koon-YAHD-oh)
cuñada - sister-in-law  (koon-YAHD-ah)
murciélago - bat: mammal,  not baseball.  (moor-see-AY-lah-goh)
mujeriego - womanizer  (moo-hayr-YAY-goh)

Words Fail Me: The Staff of Life

(In which our new series, Words Fail Me, is introduced, and Cowbell learns that pride goeth basically every damn day.)

Fold, mix, or knead?

Those of you who know me know that I'm not exactly channeling Suzy Homemaker, here. I wish I were one of those people who find cooking relaxing or fun, but I'm not. I cook because we need to eat. Moving to Costa Rica, however, has forced me to embrace my inner Suzy. I wish she were more like an inner Sybil who could just completely take over in the kitchen while I go to my inner quiet place for a nap, but no, nothing so convenient. It's all me in the kitchen.

Logically, I know that not eating processed food is a very good thing. When I'm not actually in the kitchen, I'm all about it. In theory. When it comes time to actually cook, though, logic me importa un bledo*. Once in a while, you just miss a good box or package. An easy mix. That frozen Indian food from Trader Joe's. Actually, you can find packaged food here at AutoMercado, aka the Gringo Grocery, so named because the prices reflect what desperate people with US dollars are willing to pay for that imported taste of home. Which is a lot, and why I only go once a year, before Christmas. 

Anyway, "from scratch" has become more than just a fuzzy concept that happens in other people's houses or in books about the olden days. In the States, making spaghetti sauce meant I sauteed onions, peppers, mushrooms, garlic, basil, and oregano in olive oil, then dumped in a jar of store-bought sauce, added a few personal touches like a bit of sugar to cut the acidity, a pinch of cinnamon, aaand done. "Homemade." What? It's not like I used Ragú. Here, jarred sauce is either expensive (again with the import taxes) or nasty, and let's not even talk about the national brand that comes in those tiny foil packages. Single serving size. For a gnome. So spaghetti sauce here means an assload of tomatoes. This is where I should write about blanching and peeling tomatoes. Yeah, screw that. Did it once. Everyone knows all the vitamins are in the skins, anyway.

My sauce is chock full o' vitamins.

Sweet tooth, pfft. I have a carb tooth.

Anyway, I'm kind of domestic now, y'all. I learned to make yogurt in my Crock-Pot. Yogurt, now. Come on, impressive, right? Fine. I was impressed. I make beans on the regular. Cannot believe I ever used canned black beans in the US. Guácala. Blech. That is my skeleton in the closet here, people; do not out me to the new fam. I also learned to make my own bread. I wasn't feeling that at first, but after a few months of eating "air bread" I warmed to the idea. (Hey, it's a tortilla society. You want good bread, go to Europe.)

Also, I found a no-knead recipe. That's what clinched it. 

The esposo, having been raised on air bread, was quite happy with this dense, warm, homemade manna from heaven, straight out of our oven. So we're talking about it over coffee and warm, buttered slices of deliciousness, and I say to him -- in Spanish, because it's Spanish week:

Homemade bread is so much better for us because it doesn't have preservatives. 

He stops chewing.  

Because it doesn't have what?

Preservatives. I don't use preservatives to make it.

I hope not. That doesn't even make sense.

At this point, I should've realized I'd committed yet another word fail, but these were early days, and I had yet to discover how the intricacies of Spanish lace the language like so much barbed wire. I charged on. 

Well, it does make sense if you want the bread to last longer.

 ... the bread?

Yeah. The bread in the store is full of preservatives. It lasts forever.

Oh. Preservatives. You mean preservatives.

Yeah. What did I say?

Condoms.

Oh. Preservativos means condoms. Preservantes means preservatives. Go figure. To this day, I just avoid those two words. Whoever invented Spanish did that shit just to mess with me. . 


-------------------
me importa un bledo:  it matters to me about as much as a blade of grass. I couldn't care less about it. 
guácala (WAH-kah-lah) - Gross. Blech. Disgusting. That's nasty.