Mothers and fathers

In the bad old sexist days, Mothers and Fathers was probably the only game where small Spanish girls played with small Spanish boys on something approaching equal terms.

Children playing at mothers and fathers called it jugar a las mamás y los papas, an oddity in itself, because a Spaniard still refers to my mother and father as mis padres, literally fathers. 

Spain now accepts in print that a couple can be composed of a separate madre and padre not to mention single-sex families of two madres or two padres.  In the meantime, and particularly for the middle-aged and over, parents remain padres.

The entry for padre in the Spanish Royal Academy’s Diccionario de la Lengua Española is about 56 lines long, give or take a line or so to allow for the stage where your eyes cross and you lose your place.  The entry for madre is around ten lines shorter. 

Padre involves authority, leadership and dominance, while celibacy does not prevent a priest from being considered un padre with – theoretically at least - authority over churchgoers.

The female head of a religious communities receives the title madre but as well as meaning a woman who has borne a child, the word madre crops up in networks, frameworks and ramifications. 



Definitely not a principal channel



An irrigation system’s principal channel is la acequia madre and a main drain is una alcantarilla madre while a principal beam or column of any kind of structure is known as la madre.

When the habitually emphatic Spanish wish to sound super-emphatic they resort to padre: no presto dinero a nadie, ni a mi padre – I don’t lend money to anyone, not even my father. 

The exclamation ¡tu padre! is an irritated reaction to an action or statement not meeting with approval but describing anything as de padre y muy señor mío conveys intensity or magnitude.  

Conjuring up a word-for-word translation of le echó una bronca de padre y muy señor mío is not easy, but he gave him a hell of a telling-off gives a rough idea of what went on. An unaccompanied padre still indicates ructions: me echó una bronca padre – he gave me an awful telling-off.

Mentar a la madre de uno – to name someone’s mother belongs to the very Latin custom of insulting a person through their mother.  This is why hijo de puta or hija de puta – son or daughter of a… well… a woman who charges for her favours is still an unforgivably nasty thing to call someone. 

On the other hand, the proclamation that something es de puta madre is a compliment and means that it is very special indeed, although once again the mindset is oedipally convoluted.

¡Tu madre! is found in identical circumstances to ¡tu padre! but ¡mi madre! suggests more surprise than ire and this, together with ¡madre mía!, also conveys its quota of exasperation. 

¡La madre que te parió! – the mother who bore you! can be hurled as another insult, but in the elliptical way of many Spanish sayings, ¡viva la madre que te parió! is a lavish compliment, especially if addressed to an attractive, feisty or impressive female.

Verbal tradition still lays emphasis on the importance of a mother’s role.  So much so, that desmadrarse, despite its original meaning of to wean or separate livestock from the mother, now means to rebel. 

The noun desmadre originally meant the act of weaning, but now corresponds to excess or an out-of-hand situation - something that mothers know all about, and not only when it comes to weaning.

Almonds are forever

It can be easier getting hold of the nuts that go with bolts – tuercas – than the things that give squirrels a buzz.  That’s because a dictionary insists on translating a nut as una nuez even though as far as Spanish is concerned this is a walnut. 

That’s a bit of a let-down where you’re hoping for almonds – almendras or hazelnuts – avellanas.  Cashews are anacardos, brazil nuts are coquitos de Brasil and pine kernels are piñónes while humble peanuts are cacahuetes.  They might all be nuts, but they’re not certainly not all nueces.

A man’s Adam’s apple is known as la nuez by the Spanish who presumably believe a walnut stuck in his throat, not Eve’s apple.  In the kitchen a nutmeg is una nuez moscada and a biggish knob of butter is una nuez de mantequilla but una avellana de mantequilla if it’s on the small side.

A nutcracker is un cascanueces but when a boat is called una cáscara de nuez it means it is frail or unseaworthy.  Walnuts are the noisiest of all nuts to crack, which accounts for mucho ruido y pocas nueces, a scornful saying that boils down to more noise than nuts.  It corresponds to much ado about nothing or even, depending on the circumstances and the person involved, all mouth and no trousers. 

Nuts are regarded as frutos secos, a heading that includes pipas – sunflower seeds as well as torrados – gypsum-coated chickpeas and kikos – toasted corn kernels, which are hard, salty and moreish.   Reminders of frugal times when they were cheaper and more obtainable than sweets or chocolate, they are popular for grazing but deemed slightly uncouth by those who care about that sort of thing.

Translated word for word, frutos secos gives you dried fruit and as you’d expect, this includes dates – dátiles; figs – higos; apricots – orejones; raisins – pasas and currants – pasas de Corinto or prunes, which are ciruelas pasas.

You can buy candied peel in little imported packets at supermarkets but you’ll usually find fruta glaseada or crystallised fruit where frutos secos are sold.  And for the sake of your tastebuds, be aware that una guinda is a glace cherry but una guindilla is a red hot chilli pepper.



Early spring in Cap Negret (Altea)

 It’s curious that the Spanish word for nuts should be walnuts when more of the countryside is planted with almond trees – almendros and snowdrifts of almond blossom – flor de almendo turn early spring into a set for a Thirties’ musical.

Many almond groves are overgrown now, their owners waiting to sell them as building land, until recently the fastest track to prosperity. The trees cost more to tend than the almonds fetch and it is cheaper to import them even though Spain’s native marcona variety are the sweetest and juiciest you’ll ever taste.

In Altea at least, crops are increasingly left ungathered but the untended trees blossom bravely year after year, a reminder that the property market booms and busts, but almonds are forever.

The foggiest notion

English passion is lookalike Spanish pasión but what makes passionate - apasionado interesting are its dictionary definitions of violento, fanático, partidario, vehemento and febril.  None needs translating and all hint at instability. 

On steadier ground the verb apasionar often implies to like very much or to be mad about, particularly when referring to things rather than people so Pepita would be unlikely to announce me apasiona Pepito. 

It's more usual to use apasionar when there is no likelihood of reciprocation, so there’s nothing to stop Pepita from announcing me apasiona Kandinsky – I’m mad about Kandinsky.

Lose your head and your heart to passion and you say estoy enamorada or estoy enamorado as the case might be (but you’re hedging your bets with the use of temporary estar, not permanent ser).  It means I’m in love but if things are really frantically febrile, groan estoy loca por él or loco por ella - I'm mad about him or her, which brings up instability again. 

You might prefer those kissing cousins to want and to love which are both translated by querer: le quiero locamente - I want him or her/love him or her madly, something that normally amounts to the same thing anyway.

As an adjective, querido or querida - loved one corresponds to darling although as a noun, una querida has always been understood to mean a mistress.  However, regardless of whether a man has a lover or not, he often refers to his wife as mi mujer - my woman.  This reveals a good deal about Spanish love, Spanish marriage and Spanish possessiveness, because a woman here refers to mi marido, or mi esposo but rarely to mi hombre.

A loving mother

 

Amoroso has two sides to it and means amorous in the English sense as well as affectionate, so the phrase una madre amorosa has no Oedipal overtones and simply means a loving mother. 

Cariñoso also means affectionate and/or loving, while the endearment cariño is close to darling.  Like the English word it is a variation on dear – caro and notwithstanding the masculine-looking ending is appropriate for a female darling, too.

You might wonder what a foggy-looking adjective like fogoso is doing here but it’s in the right place because it means ardent.  Delve a little and you can link it to fuego or fire - as fierily, ardently passionate as it gets. 

And now we’re on the subject we might as well mention caliente which, preceded by estar, has a not-in-front-of-the-children-or-grandma definition of to be aroused.

The same message can be conveyed with ser, believe it or not, making this one of the very few occasions when you won’t get it wrong – grammatically, at least - whichever you choose.

Only in the mating season

Macho means male and Spanish men of a certain age still use it to address friends in the same way that English-speakers of a certain age use mate or, even further back, cock (in the most innocent sense of this versatile word).  So although ¿cómo va, macho? is close to how’s it going, mate? it would once have been even closer to wotcher, cock.  

 



Un gato macho



Macho is simply the male of any species – un gato macho, for instance - and although it can signify any type of cock bird, a cock or rooster is specifically un gallo. 

 

In any case macho has fallen into disuse amongst the young who now tend to address each other as tío (literally uncle), with girls favouring tía where they would once have chosen a demure chica (girl) or mujer (woman).

Macho entered the English language on its own merits, so much so that it used to describe any stereotypically, aggressively or excessively masculine male.  The originally Spanish machismo is unchanged in English and it now means chauvinistic in both languages, although countless Spanish males are less bothered about its implications than their counterparts elsewhere.

A mate still means friend or companion amongst English-speaking males and is un amigo, un compañero or un colega amongst Spanish males.  The type of mate who accompanied a plumber in pre-crisis times is un ayudante while a flatmate is un compañero de piso.  

For chess players, checkmate is the not dissimilar jaque mate which is unsurprising because both derive from the original Persian term, shab mat, meaning “the king has died.”

A mate or partner is pareja although it was automatically assumed in the past that a mate or sexual partner would also be a lawfully wedded marido or mujer.  While still used, along with the more genteel esposo or esposa many prefer the noncommittal pareja (which also means a couple) now that Spanish society has changed so radically - as, too, have couples.

Coupling is aparear when a verb and apareamiento as a noun, although the associations of both are more zoological than anthropological.  References to the mating season does not raise the merest laugh in Spanish but is the austerely serious época de celo of wildlife or cattle.  And probably it only complicates matters to mention that that celo is understood by European Spanish-speakers to be Sellotape.

Morning, noon and night

Morning, noon and night in the sense of continually is easily translated as continuamente.  But if you want to convey the touch of exasperation or impatience often present in this phrase there’s little to choose from, apart from todo el díá and sin parar, escalating to the rather rude but far more expressive todo el puto día.

Mañana is a curious word because it means tomorrow as well as morning although the Spanish are no more inclined than anyone else to put off until tomorrow what should be done today. Of all the stereotypes that have been done to death about Spain and the Spanish, the mañana syndrome is the least insightful. 

Even the reluctance on the part of officials to get a job done and the red tape that sometimes unravels at a snail’s pace is the legacy of decades – centuries! - of bureaucracy – burocracia, not procrastination.

As well as tomorrow, mañana also means morning which, as it does everywhere, lasts until noon – mediodía.  A Spanish mid-day does not always correspond to an English-speaker’s mid-day, which is less than surprising in a country where lunch and dinner reach the table a good couple of hours later than in more northerly climates. 

So be prepared for a mediodía that can stretch to 1 or even 2 p.m. and expect to hear buenos días until after lunch, which on reflection is neither eccentric nor unpunctual because this greeting (in the plural for good measure) has the literal meaning of good day and not good morning,

Our afternoon is a Spanish tarde and this also signifies late in the sense of what else but tardy?  Once lunch is over, you greet people with a plural buenas tardes – good afternoon and this sees you through until evening. 

Nightfall is described by the verbs anochecer and atardecer as well hacerse de noche, literally to become night, which is appropriate for a country where twilight exists as crepúsculo but is rarely observed, since day’s journey into night is never noticeably long in Mediterranean Spain.

Twilight is fleeting

At this point you switch to buenas noches and because Spanish is satisfyingly precise when it is not being impressively prolix, there is a specific verb, trasnochar, which means to be up late or, if you really push the boat out, to be up all night.

On occasions like this, you experience firsthand la madrugada - the early hours of the morning alongside those who want or have to madrugar – another supremely precise verb meaning to get up early at the crack of dawn - el amanecer.

While we’re on the subject, the saying no por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano - daybreak comes no sooner however early you get up implies that everything happens in its own time.  So forget about the mañana syndrome: this one is nearer the truth.

Chopping and changing

Carnivores wanting a chop in a Spanish restaurant or butcher’s get one by asking for una chuleta, one of those words that entered Spanish through the back door of the other languages spoken here. According to the late María Moliner’s Diccionario de Uso del Español, chuleta is a direct descendant of chulla, originally Valenciano - a language that Catalans insistently describe as Catalán, although that’s their quarrel rather than ours. 

There is more to chuleta than a something chopped off a lamb or pig, however, because it is also a crib used by students, vital information usually written on a small piece of paper small enough to smuggle into an exam.

There is a third version of chuleta, and this time it is both a noun and adjective applying to someone (inevitably male despite the feminine ending) who is loud-mouthed, challenging and/or arrogant. 



Jaspy and María Moliner



This chuleta has no links to a carnivorous diet or cheating students, but is a diminutive form of chulo which again is another borrowing according to reliable María Moliner, this time from Andalusí-Romance which in turn took it from the Latin sciolus meaning, of all, things, learned.

Chulo can likewise be a noun or an adjective and has a long list of definitions, some innocuous and others less so.   As far as the Spanish people were once concerned, un chulo was someone born and bred in Madrid neighbourhoods like Lavapies, Chamberri or La Latina although these are now less parochial and noticeably more international than formerly.  

But in the past – as now – Madrileños were not to everybody’s liking and chulo came to describe someone who was overbearing, insolent or arrogant.  Chulo also has the auxiliary meaning of pimp or ponce but a female chula is rarely a procuress or madam, which would be translated as una proxeneta. 

Instead una chula is a woman displaying all the flaws of un chulo - but not always because chula is also an endearment and gives a glimpse of the past when women were expected to be submissive, but reluctantly admired when they weren’t.

Despite possessing so many unedifying translations, there is also a squeaky-clean side to chulo  that has withstood the test of time.  An admiring ¡qué chulo! is as appropriate for 70-year-olds as 17-year-olds because although most slang comes and goes, some words hang around forever and each of them is exclaiming something approximate to cool!