Talking turkey

In times that were more austere than these and could sometimes be downright frugal Christmas Eve dinner – la cena de Nochebuena, was a high point of the year, foodwise.  Presents did not appear until 6th January, the Día de Reyes – the Epiphany and Christmas Eve and Christmas Day – el Día de Navidad were a time for eating, drinking and making merry.

They still are and Christmas Eve dinner remains the most important meal of the holiday.  In some regions, particularly the North, the table will groan under the weight of shellfish and seafood – marisco. 

In the centre of Spain, chickpea-based cocido – similar to couscous without the couscous - is another choice although it is gradually losing its appeal, being regarded as too hearty, too inelegant and no longer special enough for such a gastronomically special occasion.

A great many English-speaking foreign residents are under the impression that they are responsible for the popularity of turkey - pavo.  In fact it has been a favourite for so long that pavo became slang for a five-peseta piece, the price of a Christmas turkey in the early twentieth century.

Turkey crops up in other slangy contexts, so pelar el pavo has nothing to do with plucking a turkey but would describe the billings and cooings – ñoñerías exchanged between a courting couple, a former ritual now more outdated than a five-peseta piece. 

Anything termed a turkey because it is a flop, failure or disaster would be un fracaso, un desastre or un bodrio.  To talk turkey is ir al grano or hablar a las claras but la edad del pavo tells you nothing about the sell-by date of your Christmas dinner and is the awkward age of adolescence. 

Translated word-for-word moco de pavo is totally unedifying turkey snot but in fact this is the snood or pendulous piece of skin that hangs from a turkey’s beak and proves yet again how easy it is to get the wrong end of the translating stick.  The phrase is rarely used in a zoological sense but crops up more usually in the phrase eso no es moco de pavo – that’s something not to be sneezed at.

A peacock loses much of its glamour in the Spanish version of pavo real or royal turkey although the verb pavonearse is an ostentatious to strut, show off or brag.

Una pava is a female turkey but is also a kettle although this largely Latin American term can produce a blank reaction from European Spanish-speakers who, despite painstaking explanations, still want to refer to this as una tetera.   This is literally a teapot and could be one of the reasons why Spanish tea is never quite like mother makes.

Flora, flowerpots and... kettle

If eating out, or invited to dine in someone’s home in Levante and particularly the Murcia region you might be offered paella de pava but don’t expect it to contain the remains of the Christmas dinner.   It will indeed contain pava, a regional word for cauliflower, which might be fine for vegetarians but not what a carnivore hopes for at any time of the year.

Briefly speaking

Briefly speaking is en pocas palabras, theoretically in few words and a practice that is not remarkably Spanish.  Even our hurried half a mo’ which requests (or commands) forbearance when time is short becomes a ponderous un momento while sometimes a lengthening diminutive turns it into a barked momentito.  The use of  -ito is deliberate because Spanish resorts to suffixes to soften plain speaking or discourtesy.

The Spanish loathe being thought bad-mannered which, together with a tendency to associate formality with verborrhoea, gave rise in the past to letters which routinely ended with a compassionate …que Dios le guarde muchos años – may God grant you long life.  

Owing to lack of space, solicitous leave-takings in bureaucratic dealings were routinely abbreviated to a tangle of initials: S.S.B.S.M. – Servidor seguro besa su mano: a trusted servant kisses your hand although un servidor has lately acquired the new and not at all subservient role of an Internet server.

Public speakers in Spain are notoriously long-winded and writers often portentously prolix but the sporadic conciseness of Spanish can break through like a ray of sunshine piercing fog.  S.M. stands for Su Majestad – His or Her Majesty but SSMM is an admirably economical Their Majesties.  This plurality is also responsible for the apparently mystifying abbreviation of EEUU for Estados Unidos (United States) and CCOO for the trade union, Comisiones Obreras. 

Less a question of economy and more a matter of laziness is the shortening of señorita to seño when addressing a female schoolteacher, single or married: hoy se enfadó la seño – today Miss got cross.  El director is frequently shortened to el dire by schoolchildren when referring to a headmaster – un director de colegio.

Children’s abbreviations have infiltrated adult conversation, so adults say el super for supermercado, la pelu for la peluquería (hairdresser’s), el frigo for el frigorífico (refrigerator) and el cole instead of colegio.  Many adults as well as children use  porfa for por favour (please) when speaking to those they are at ease with but que pases un buen finde is teen-speak for que pases un buen fin de semana (have a good weekend).

Catalina - who answers to Cata - and Jasper, who answers to no-one

Names get contracted, too, so someone called Esperanza is called Espe and María Teresa become Maite. Once you realise that the cut-off point in a Spanish name doesn’t necessarily arrive where you’d expect, it’s easier to see why Asunción answers to Asun.

Concepción is reduced to Concha, Conchi or Conchita and Merche to Mercedes although on birth certificates, these will often be preceded by Maria de as in María de la Concepción although prepositions can be avoided: María Mercedes or María Cristina.

Sometimes the final a is dropped María into Mari or the familiar-looking Mary, a common practice amongst girls saddled with names like María de la Buena Leche

Men’s names get a similar treatment, so Jesús turns into Chus and Joaquín into Chimo,  while José María can be Josema or Chema; many a Manuel is called Manolo although some answer to Lolo too and Sebastián gets called Sebas.

There are Josés who prefer to remain José but others are happy with Pepe.  Pepe is the spoken version of the letters P.P. which in more pious times followed the name of San José – St. Joseph and stood for Padre Putativo – substitute or stand-in father (to Christ).

Francisco and Francisca almost always answer to Paco and Paca and this is the responsibility of San Francisco de Asís (St. Francis of Asisi) who, having founded the Franciscan order, was referred to as Pater Communitatis (Father of the Community).  

In classic Spanish fashion which likes verbal short cuts just as much as the long way round, they took first two syllables of each word to come up with PaCo.  And the interesting thing is that many a Paco or Paca is blissfully unaware of this – try asking them!

Joking apart

Every language and country has its sayings – refranes or  proverbs – proverbios and Spanish not only does the favour of translating proverbial as proverbial but provides consabido, too.

There’s nothing like proverbs for catching a glimpse of how people view or face up to trouble and it’s fascinating to see how Spanish and English-speakers say the same thing in different ways.



Riada



Llover sobre mojado means pretty much the same as it never rains but it pours, although gloomy recognition that problems never arrive singly is more often conveyed with a perro flaco todo son pulgas.  

There is something infinitely more resigned about a skinny dog is all fleas than the prospect of a great deal of rain – not that rain is troublefree in a country as susceptible to flash flooding – una riada as drought – sequía.

Sequía

Del agua mansa me libre Dios, que de la brava me guardaré yo is supposed to correspond to still waters run deep although its literal translation of God protect me from calm water and I’ll protect myself from the rough resembles our God protect me from my friends and I’ll protect myself from my enemies.

But éramos pocos y parió la abuela as well as si no te gusta el caldo, dos tazas and monta un circo y le crecen los enanos are supremely Spanish and supremely revealing.   

The first explains the Spanish sense of the ridiculous, the second illustrates the Spanish tendency to expect the worst and the third demonstrates Spanish acceptance that the worst will happen.

The literal translation of éramos pocos y parió la abuela is there weren’t many of us and Grandma gave birth.  This is a variation on the straw that broke the camel’s back but the joke is that the phrase means precisely the opposite to what it says.  Without enough room to swing a cat, Grandma – not supposed to be of childbearing age – complicates things by adding another occupant. 

Si no te gusta el caldo, dos tazas means if you don’t like soup, you get two bowls and implies that aversion to something dooms you to having it shoved down your throat.  The more modern and defiantly politically incorrect monta un circo y le crecen los enanos conjures up someone who has such bad luck that if he had a circus, the dwarfs would grow.

These are prime examples of the Spanish irony - ironía which is not always present in Spanish humour.  Nation shall speak unto nation by learning a foreign language but the joke that nation tells unto nation is often harder to understand.

Understanding the punch line of a Spanish joke – un chiste español entails more than vocabulary and does not guarantee that you will split your sides with laughter. 

Although a una comedia is now regarded as a comedy, originally it was no laughing matter and meant any kind of play, not specifically a funny one. Un comediante was an actor and describing someone as un comediante or una comedianta still implies that he or she is a hypocrite.  Onstage a comedian was and is un cómico although a printed comic is un tebeo.

Joke-y verbs are bromear and gastar una broma when playing a joke or saying joking apart – bromas aparte.  But to tell one is contar un chiste and not the tempting chistar, which means means to draw attention to, usually with the psst that a Spanish-speaker hears as chssss.

Lo hice sin chistar means I did it without saying a word, so the implication is not that I did it silently but did it without complaining., all of which confirms that there’s nothing very funny about chistar (or many a chiste español for that matter).   

Counting Sheep

To paraphrase the Beatles, there’s nothing you can say that can’t be translated but some words are undeniably peculiar to a particular language. That’s what happens with trashumancia although if you look in the right kind of erudite place you will be presented with transhumance.   Ever used it, though? 

Migrancy is a less scholarly translation although this can mean anything from aimless drifting to upping and leaving one’s home for another country.  Trashumancia refers specifically to the seasonal movement of people with their livestock over relatively short distances, typically to higher pastures in summer and lower valleys in winter. 

Another definition says much the same thing while disagreeing about mileage: the movement of cattle or other grazing animals to new pastures, often quite distant, according to the change in season. 

These grazing animals were usually sheep – ganado ovino, as beef cattle – ganado bovino or ganado vacuno were never particularly important to Spain, apart from fighting bulls – toros bravos or toros de lídia.

Via pecuaria, Altea

Whatever the animals involved, many roads today follow ancient trails or cañadas - some prehistoric - used by trashumantes.  Keep an eye open and you will often be rewarded by a sign identifying the road you are travelling as una cañada or via pecuaria, which amounts to the same thing.   

Even now drovers retain the rights and free movement granted centuries ago to the Honrada Concejo de la Mesta, the powerful sheep breeding and raising association which was the only commercial activity once deemed fit for a gentleman.  This was when Spain’s sheep produced the world’s finest merino wool – lana merino and the Spanish empire was so cash-rich thanks to Latin America’s riches that no-one thought twice about exporting shorn wool  – lana esquilada that was later reimported at considerable expense as woven cloth.  

There is still no wool-weaving industry here but periodically, principally to remind the government of their financial plight, sheep-breeders drive their drive flocks – rebaños through Madrid’s Paseo de la Castellana and Calle Recoletos. Traffic there is so dense that a few hundred sheep hardly make things worse although no-one could do anything about it, even if they wanted to.

To count sheep as an insomnia remedy remains unchanged in translation as contar ovejas but a sheep dog becomes un perro pastor, literally a shepherd dog. Like everyone else, the Spanish can have a black sheep or una oveja negra in the family, a term which, despite being feminine, applies principally to men. 

sheep and goats ...after the sheep moved

Cada oveja con su pareja –  each sheep with its partner is the Spanish version of our birds of a feather flock together.  Another saying, to separate the sheep from the goats diverges to become separar el grano de la paja – to sort the grain from the straw.

Sheepish is usually agreed by dictionaries to be avergonzado which is actually closer to shamefaced, sheepishness evidently not forming part of Spain’s repertoire of looks.

Borrego means both a sheepskin as well as a sheep or lamb and our mackerel sky is seen as un cielo aborregado, with clouds resembling a fleece instead of the pattern on a mackerel’s back.   

Where there are sheep there has to be mutton – carnero but lamb or cordero is preferred by the Spanish.  Lamb chops – chuletas de cordero are fried – fritas or eaten grilled – a la plancha, but the only way to eat a leg or shoulder of lamb is roasted  - al horno. Until comparatively recently not every Spanish kitchen had an oven - horno and roast lamb – cordero asado was usually a treat to be eaten out. 

One way of getting round this was to take the joint to the nearest local baker - panadero to roast it in his own oven once the bread was done. Unlike trendy restaurants where diners must eat their lamb pink, both baker and housewife always knew that it had to be crisp outside and falling moistly off the bone inside. 

And no doubt that’s just the way that Alonso Quijano a.k.a. Don Quijote, whose La Mancha stamping ground produced most of Spain’s lamb and mutton, ate it too.

 

Flans and fiestas

Flans and fiestas are potential disappointments for newcomers to Spain.  An English-speaker’s flan is generally an exciting affair involving fruit, jelly, cream, sponge and other calorie-laden ingredients but a Spanish flan reaches the table as an unexciting version of crème caramel. 

A flan may now be disguised with different flavours and an unexpected addition or two – pine nuts, for instance, or cheese.  Sadly, there is no denying that underneath the tarting-up a flan is no tart and resembles solidified custard.

What European English speakers identify as custard is crema inglesa (really English cream).  When thicker and gooier it is a plural natillas, always eaten cold and so popular that they are made on an industrial scale and sold alongside yoghourts – yogures and another favourite, rice pudding – arroz con leche and again, never eaten warm. 

Another setback is discovering that una fiesta is what we know as a Bank Holiday, which comes as a welcome break but does not entail all-singing, all-dancing jollity with bunting, streamers and lots to drink.  This type of event is instead referred to in the plural – how not in a language which consistently pluralises what is so often singular in any other? – as fiestas. 

Some fiestas are more mdest than others...

Cities, towns, villages and hamlets all have yearly fiestas patronales in honour of a locally-revered saint, holy patron or sacred event.  Based on piety they have evolved into entertainment that is more profane than sacred and a very merry time is had by all.  Things get even more cheerful during the Moors and Christians fiestas – fiestas de Moros y Cristianos which are a salute southern Spain’s Moorish past. 

The first were held in 1588 in Caudete (now in Albacete province, but then part of Valencia) although the most famous belong to Alcoy and Villajoyosa, which are both in Alicante. 

These fiestas provide a chance to dress up, let off fireworks, fight mock battles, eat and (especially) drink.  It is telling that they are known as Moors and Christians, not Christians and Moors, and although the invaders always lose the last mock battle, more people want to be Moors than Christians. 

Back in the singular, una fiesta is a party where food, wine, conversation and music all flow. Un festejo is more of a festivity or celebration and the verb festejar means to celebrate and/or to feast. 

This could also be translated into English with the French borrowing to fete which strictly speaking should be written as fête with a circumflex denoting the former presence of a long-lost letter S.  And there we are, almost back to fiesta.

For many, a fête conjures up a rained-upon, washed-out garden fête, a fate worse than summery death.  This type of fate is translated as destino, suerte (which in this context means luck in the sense of lot) and sino which leads a hectic double life as an occasional substitute for but.

The Spanish are supposed to have a personal, gloomy and even doomed relationship with fate.  Possibly because of this, destino is synonymous with destination as well as destiny so there is nothing preordained or fatalistic about un tren con destino Madrid, which is merely a Madrid-bound train. 

The adjective fatal is no less fatal in Spanish than English but is a preferred adjective for hypochondriacs and me encuentro fatal means I feel awful even when the complainer has a 100 per cent chance of survival.  Fatal is also a favourite with the hypercritical and esa blusa te sienta fatal is an unforgiving you look awful in that blouse.

Hot Stuff

A Mediterranean winter can be colder than you’d imagine but the summer usually exceeds expectations and what you get between June and September - and sometimes into October - is un verano caluroso – a hot summer.

a Mediterranean summer can exceed expectations

Using the adjective caliente paints another picture, though, because un verano caliente is more likely to be a summer of political or social unrest.

Comer caliente means to have a hot meal, but to make a decision en caliente implies to make it in the heat of the moment while pillar en caliente is to catch someone red-handed. 

A repeated caliente, caliente matches our warm...  and is the clue you’re given when you’re getting closer to something you’re looking for or trying to guess.

In the modern acceptance of being or looking sexy and generally er... up for it (in other words the hot stuff of the past) caliente corresponds to hot. 

In the days when the subject was cloaked in euphemisms, it was described as picante, implying racy or risqué, and easily pinned down as piquant.  This, incidentally, is the word to use for hot food that owes hotness to seasoning, not temperature.

Hot water is agua caliente but a hot debate would be un debate acalorado and hot temper is mucho genio, which isn’t necessarily the same as bad temper – mal genio, while to get into hot water is meterse en un lío.

When the sun is hot, we describe it as sol fuerte but if it is burning hot it becomes un sol abrasador or un sol de justicia, apparently a reminder of times when prisoners were deliberately put to work in the blazing sun.

Weather requires caluroso: tiempo caluroso but a person who is hot and bothered because of circumstances or weather is described as sofocado, agobiado.

Calurosa and cálido tend to be interchangeable and can be used for warm although warm water is generally agua tibia or agua templada and never agua calurosa.  On the other hand, the warm sun of a Spanish winter is un sol suave.

Anyone mopping their brow gasps how hot I am – ¡qué calor tengo!  This state of prostration dispenses with either of the to be verbs, and is instead conveyed by tener - to have. If remarking on the weather rather than oneself, it is necessary to use hacer, literally to make: ¡qué calor hace! - how hot it is!

When it's hot it’s often sultry - bochornoso and you’ll also meet the noun bochorno although you’ll still tend to translate it as an English adjective, since ¡qué bochorno! – how sultry! is easier on the tongue than what sultriness!

Another definition for bochorno/bochornoso is embarrassment/embarrassing or shame/shameful but they don't suit a sultry female.  She would once have invited several adjectives - seductora, perhaps, or hechicera (bewitching) – although caliente suffices nowadays.

The verb calentar - to heat, heat up is suitable for coffee, bath-water or a political crisis: en el otoño se va a calentar la situacíon política – the political situation is going to heat up in the autumn.

You hear estar caliente, tener fiebre, tener la temperature alta when someone has a temperature, while the reflexive calentarse is often synonymous with to bother and the obvious to get hot and bothered. 

Curiously enough in a language that hypes on hyperbole, when to overheat refers to a car engine, the translation remains calentarse: siempre se calienta en verano – it always overheats in summer.

Harder to guess at is the hot-sounding una calentura, another example of the way a translation can turn a word inside out, inside-out because una calentura corresponds to the hot-lipped hatefulness of a cold sore.

... but a Mediterranean winter can be colder than you'd expect

It's only natural

La naturaleza isn’t a bad translation for nature, particularly the woods, trees, birds and bees type of Nature that comes equipped with a capital letter. 

By and large, the Spanish do not treat Nature with the reverence and awe of northern Europeans.  This could have something to do with the fact that for people who live on the land - and off it – Nature has always been more of an adversary than an ally.

Those able to usually make the quickest possible getaway from rural life although - rather like the Estuary for the self-exiled Essex-born - they later regard it through a haze of inaccurate nostalgia.



Inaccurate nostalgia for the Thames estuary



You might encounter the odd reference to Mother Nature – Madre Naturaleza but this pagan old lady tends to be a foreign immigrant although the Spanish are as fond as we are of citing human nature – la naturaleza humana as an explanation for weakness, self-indulgence and downright nastiness.

Naturaleza also describes the nature that is a characteristic: la naturaleza del problema - the nature of the problem.

When nature implies character the Spanish prefer carácter, so our he’s ill-natured becomes tiene mal carácter but on the more pleasant side, he’s good-natured is tiene buen carácter. 

As so often happens with Spanish mood and mien, it is necessary to have your nature and not be it, so you’ll find yourself using tener – to have.

Naturaleza combines with muerta – dead for the grim-sounding naturaleza muerta featuring dead game or Constance Spry flower arrangements. 



Unremarkable objects to be found in any kitchen



Nevertheless, a classic Spanish still life painting usually concentrated on the utensils, food, fruit and the other unremarkable objects found in the store room or larder – bodega of any home, and accordingly acquired the name of un bodegón. 

To paint from life, however, is pintar del natural and although this has now cropped up where you might not have expected, natural generally poses few headaches.

It’s natural can be translated as es natural or even es normal but the slightly argumentative it’s only natural becomes a slightly dogmatic no puede ser de otra manera (literally it couldn’t be otherwise).

Natural usually obliges, so a natural blonde is una rubia natural but this doesn’t always happen and a natural dancer is una bailarina nata, literally a born dancer.

Leche natural and agua natural mean that milk or water are at room temperature regardless of their purity while food described as al natural is prepared very simply without flavourings or additions.

Zumo natural is fresh, pure fruit juice and this usage has entered the speech of English-speakers living in Spain who now ask for natural fruit juice in English too. 

Natural also means originating or born in: mi suegra era natural de Cuenca – my mother-in-law was from Cuenca but when applied to looks, make-up, dress or manner it conveys simplicity and lack of pretension.

So if you’re ever in a position to meet one, you might eventually pronounce the duchess was very natural – la duquesa era muy natural although a Spaniard would just as soon say la duquesa era muy sencilla, literally easy, simple, normal. 

Another option would be la duquesa era muy llana although possibly that makes her sound less duchess-y and like someone who calls a spade a spade.

The plural Naturales is the way pupils – always eager to eliminate unnecessary verbiage - refer to Ciencias Naturales but Nature Study is Estudio de la Historia Natural.

Unnatural used to be a popular verdict for anything that went against the grain and in Spanish you can choose between anti-natural, no natural, perverso, anormal or afectado. 

The adverb naturalmente corresponds to naturally: naturalmente le gusta Cuenca – naturally she likes Cuenca.  It also helps to keep you afloat during uninspiring conversations and naturalmente… naturalmente… interspersed with the occasional claro… claro… allows you to sound not only sympathetic and empathetic but fluent, too.

Un naturalista is a nudist and natura looks as though it should fit in somewhere but curiously never crops up in day-to-day conversation.  A quick flip though a Spanish-English dictionary may explain why, since the sole definition for natura is nothing more and nothing less than genitals. 

Evergreen

The green at a golf course obligingly remains el green but climate, not to mention culture, means you won’t come across anything resembling a European English-speaker’s village green. 

What you will find in many rural districts – little-used and all but forgotten except during local fiestas – is la era or threshing ground that was (and still is) an ideal shape and ideally located for the annual knees-up.

As an adjective, verde  brings few surprises and is usable in most green situations: un vestido verde – a green dress; una almohada verde - a green cushion; una manzana verde – a green apple and – increasingly – the  energía verde which is green energy. 

Thus a green sleeve is una manga verde and the old English song Greensleeves becomes, logically enough, Mangas Verdes.  The saying a buenas horas mangas verdes is one hundred per cent Spanish, though, and harks back to the Santa Hermandad,  15th century police officers who wore a type of uniform with wide green sleeves. 

They were notoriously incapable of getting a move on and habitually arrived late at crime scenes, so when said reprovingly to someone who turns up or does something too late, ¡a buenas horas mangas verdes! implies and about time too!



Green grapes are white: uvas blancas



Verde won’t be what you’re looking for to translate green grapes because, despite their unmistakable colour, the Spanish regard them as white: uvas blancas. 

 On the other hand, as in English, verde is adequate for unripe fruit or vegetables: una patata verde – a green potato. It can also describe a person who is inexpert or a plan or project which has yet to come to fruition. 

The saying dar la luz verde has only been around since the introduction of traffic lights, and means to give the go ahead (literally green light).

Back to nouns, verdes used to be slang for thousand peseta notes but with a capital letter, Verdes are Greens in the political sense although the non-specific greens we were told to eat up when we were little are verdura. 

Greens can also be referred to as the even more non-specific hortalizas which covers everything from spinach – espinacas to root vegetables although the horticulturally-knowledgeable call these tubérculos. 

Verdor

 Verdor won’t appear on your plate, but does the dual job of meaning both greenness and greenery. 

Latin American influence means you increasingly encounter vegetables translated as vegetales although formerly this referred principally to what is green but inedible, like grass, trees or plants.

Paradoxically bars and restaurants like to list a salad sandwich as un sandwich vegetal but be prepared to meet the doughy part of the deal listed as sanuich, sanguis or even sanvis.  

Papel vegetal is the totally indigestible greaseproof paper, however, and although vegetación is a predictable vegetation the plural vegetaciones are more of an affliction: adenoids.

An evergreen tree or bush is un árbol or un arbusto de hoja perenne but if this is used an adjective describing an evergreen song it pales into un favorito. 

Un verde in these environmentally-aware times tends to be an innocuous ecologist but un viejo verde always was – and still is – a dirty old man while un chiste verde remains off-colour as a blue joke.



Catalina on patrol



Billy goat stuff

Possibly because Spain was mainly agricultural before it was transformed by tourism and the building boom, many obscenities and sexual euphemisms originate in the farmyard.

For this reason it’s not a bad idea to be circumspect if bringing rabbit – conejo, eggs – huevos and even straw – paja into the conversation.  You may mention them without raising so much as an eyebrow, let alone a laugh, when shopping but outside the market or supermarket they are apt to bring a faint twitch even to the most solemn Spanish lips.

And when asking for chicken it is wiser to ask for pollo.  Don’t be tempted to change the -o into an -a believing this turns the word into something approximate to a hen unless you want to provoke ribald hilarity. 

Play safe and ask for gallina, a word that leads a demure double life as slang for money and turns up in carne de gallina, literally hen’s flesh but actually goose pimples.

Corcho means cork but the exclamation ¡corcho! substitutes a ruder, cruder but similar-sounding expression of surprise, anger or – occasionally – admiration.  This is based on the word for which conejo is a euphemism (and no, I’m not going to spell it out).

Away from the farmyard and corral ¡jolín! or ¡jolínes! replace a much-used verb that corresponds to the f-word in English.

Even these versions were once considered a little strong for mixed company but are now used by five-year-olds, while what they replace pepper everyday conversations and are no longer bleeped out on the radio or television. 

In a formerly devout Catholic country, complicated blasphemy remains a satisfying way of letting off steam, but ¡Jesús! offends no-one and is how you say Bless you! after a sneeze.

The rudest way to tell someone to go away or get lost in English advises him or her to go off and make a personal contribution to the world population.  This isn’t said in Spanish – quite the reverse, in fact - and instead there is a comprehensive translation for all our lesser, but still obscene, English requests to leave the scene.

This is so anatomically explicit that the recipient of the more mealy-mouthed and bowdlerised ¡vete a tomar por el saco! will still make a hasty exit while being left in no doubt that they’ve gone and got your goat. 

You can translate to get someone’s goat almost literally as cabrear or, when you are the one who is seething, cabrearse.  It is an inelegant verb, but that does not prevent people from using it, or the noun cabreo – rage, a monumental sulk or a foul mood.

Nanny goats (plus a sheep or two)

This word is associated with cabra or goat, a female word for a female animal because most of the adults in a corral (the same in both languages) are nanny-goats. They are kept for their milk and their chivatos – kids towards the production of which a corral usually houses a billy goat - un macho cabrío.

There are occasions when the suffix -ón changes a female noun into something bigger, better and masculine – taza (cup) for instance produces the innocuous tazón (breakfast bowl).

Don’t do this with cabra, though. Just as pollo is best left alone, so is cabra because by adding the -ón suffix you produce cabrón – a wounding insult. 

Those intent on causing offence get across the same idea with adjective cornudo – horned but either way, the man it describes is still a cuckold and wears a cuckold’s horns – los cuernos.

This might sound picturesquely outdated to an English-speaker’s ears, but it continues to pack a punch with a Spanish male and prompts as much indignation as insulting his mother’s morals.

Nastier till is un cornudo consentido – a consenting cuckold because adultery can happen in the best of families, but to turn a blind eye or, even worse, to profit from it, is held to be intolerable.