Chinese Puzzle

China is not what it was.  Or has it remained the same, while the rest of the world has changed? 

This is something of a puzzle in itself and is illustrated by the way that China figures prominently in so many figures of Spanish speech still used by older generations.

Everybody knows that un cuento chino – a Chinese story is a tall story but anyone with few assets and pressing debts will probably be eligible for a free bus pass if they complain tengo más trampas que una pelicula china. Seldom used by the young, it loses its jaunty desperation in translation, sounding nearer to farce than tragedy: I’ve more snares than a Chinese film. 

Cities and large towns in Spain still possess un barrio chino – Chinatown although it will be a red light district rather than a neighbourhood where restaurants serve Peking Duck. 

Less specialised on both counts is tinta china or Indian ink while any work – trabajo involving considerable time and patience is a politically-incorrect – but still undeniably apt - trabajo de chinos.

¡Naranjas de la China! – Chinese oranges! (kumquats, according to some) conveys the same scepticism of that’ll be the day. 

China also possesses a secondary Spanish meaning of fine china or porcelain but the everyday type produced in Staffordshire, for instance, is loza. 

China with a capital letter refers to the country itself but because adjectives of nationality are written without capital letters in Spanish, una china means a small pebble as well as a Chinese woman. 

Chino is the Chinese language, but un chino is a Chinese man although the term has acquired the meaning of a Chinese restaurant now that there are so many in Spain.  More recently, un chino is also understood to mean a shop with Chinese owners which sells an enormous variety of objects at very low prices.

Jugar a los chinos refers to a game often played by carousing adults to determine who pays for a meal or the next round of drinks.  It entails guessing the combined number of small objects concealed in a fellow-player’s closed fist, with the least consistent guesser footing the bill.  

Anyone investigating the equivalent of a Chinese puzzle will find this is un rompecabezas although this word covers all types of posers – even jigsaws - and not the fiendishly taxing kind that English-speakers associate with this kind of brainteaser.

La quinta china is the back of beyond. It sounds as though it could be the Chinese estate, a group of recruits called up to go to China or a scrambled version of el quinto pino – the fifth pine, yet another way to describe the back of beyond. 

Some people trace this to 18th century Madrid when the Paseo de Recoletos (still there, incidentally) was one of the city’s principal streets.  This led north into what is now the Paseo de la Castellana (temporarily Paseo del Generalísimo, but that’s another story) which was planted with five perfectly aligned, perfectly spaced pine trees.



Pines in Cap Negret, not Madrid



Madrid was smaller then and La Castellana was practically on the outskirts so the fifth pine – el quinto pino was, in those limited times, far enough away to be considered a very long way off.

Another faraway place, la Cochinchina, is your third option for the middle of nowhere but since  this was once the Vietnamese region whose capital is Saigon, at least you'll know how to get there.

Sweet Nothings

Una rosca can be two separate things. The first is the thread on a screw or screw top and the second is a round, biscuity sort of cake with a hole in the middle – not particularly exotic but more interesting than its distant English relation, a rusk. 

A young male who is not over-successful with the opposite sex might complain no me como ni una rosca. Literally this sad admission means I don’t get even one biscuity sort of cake etc. but implies (for want of a better way of putting it) it’s been a long time since I’ve been intimately involved with anyone.

It’s curious that such an austere turn of phrase should be chosen for such an unaustere activity, especially on pondering the euphemistic possibilities of  cakes, tarts and biscuits on view at a Spanish baker’s. 

Spaniards visiting Britain often express somewhat naive surprise at encountering so many churches in a famously secular country.  Britons react in much the same way to the many pastelerías and confiterías – cake shops that jostle with establishments providing the expected vino, tapas and paella.

Resort towns and villages boast multiple bakeries and cake shops but it is necessary to leave the coast behind to discover just how sweet Spain’s tooth is.  Order a café bombón (a shot of black coffee poured over a slug of super-sweet condensed milk) and it is invariably served with a packet of sugar in the saucer.

A sweet-toothed person is described as goloso, a pretty-sounding word that sounds less pretty if translated as greedy.  Una golosina is one translation for a sweet and un caramelo is another.  This sounds suspiciously like a caramel and it sometimes will be, but the word applies to most sweets not involving chocolate..

Much that is sweet and Spanish has a religious name or connection, possibly because so many convents maintained themselves (and still do) by producing and selling cakes and confectionary.

Huesos de santo, literally saints’ bones, are small rolls of marzipan with a sugar and yolk-based filling.  Sinfully delicious yemas de Santa Teresa are again made from egg yolks and sugar and acquired their name because, like Saint Teresa, they are associated with Ávila.

Tarta de Santiago is almond cake from Galicia which Santiago a.k.a. San Jaime Apostol – Saint James the Apostle supposedly visited, hence Santiago de Compostela in whose cathedral he is said to be buried.

Equally predictable, tarta de San Jorge is a Catalonian speciality honouring Saint George, the region’s patron saint (and England’s).

The adjective sweet is normally translated as dulce:  hogar, dulce hogar – home, sweet home but reappears in agua dulce – fresh water while pimentón dulce – paprika is described as sweet to distinguish it from hot pimentón picante.

Sweet nothings would be dulces ñoñerías although unfortunately ñoñería is irremediably linked to insipidness and fussiness, which says little for Spanish regard for romantic murmurings.

 A Spaniard would probably substitute amable, agradable for an English-speaker’s sweet person, reserving dulce for someone who is not only sweet but also gentle and charming and possessed of genuine, not synthetic, dulzura – sweetness.

Un mono is a monkey and una mona is a sugary, spicy bun eaten all year round, but topped with an unshelled hardboiled egg for Easter. 



una gatita salada



As an adjective mono or mona is appropriate for sweet, pretty children of either sex and sweet, pretty females of any age.  It also refer to the sweetness or pleasantness of any object, as in ¡qué gatita más mona! but you could just as easily exclaim ¡qué gatita más salada! and although this means what a salty little cat! everyone knows that you think she’s sweet.

All at sea

A life on the ocean wave is fine for those with sea-legs inside their sea-boots but landlubbers would agree that the Spanish show imagination by translating the sea as el mar and defining marear not only as to sail and to navigate but also to make ill, to annoy, to disturb or to bother. 

Perhaps the occasional sailor employs the verb marear to describe the risky business of going to sea but this is mostly used in circumstances which are generally anything but plain sailing.

Use of marear as well as estar mareado is a standard reaction to someone who is a nuisance: me estás mareando - you’re getting on my nerves! while ¡no me marees! is the stock injunction, don’t hassle me! Announcing estoy mareado generally conveys physical discomfort rather than state of mind and covers a wide range of queasiness: I feel sick, seasick, giddy, dizzy or simply I don’t feel too good. 

It can also be interpreted as I’ve had rather too much to drink and, as often happens with Spanish diminutives, a diminutive heralds excess and not moderation so César estaba un poco mareadito could be a charitable way of saying César was drunk.

Marear is a prime candidate for reflexiveness, but me mareo still means I am sick, seasick, giddy, dizzy or simply I don’t feel too good.

So what’s the difference between estoy mareado and me mareo?  There’s not a lot in it but there is definitely more urgency when the latter is an exclamation, and on hearing ¡me mareo! it is advisable to have brandy, smelling salts or, if the worst comes to the worst, a sick-bag at the ready.

In some circumstances mareo is a bother or a nuisance and a questioning ¿es mucho mareo? – is it much of a nuisance? is an apologetic way of indicating that you are aware of being a nuisance but are reluctant to modify or withdraw the request prompting the question. 



pleamar:  when the water laps round your neck

 

Living on the Mediterranean coast it is easy to forget that Spain has tidal coasts as well.  The noun marea means tide: marea alta - high tide and marea baja - low tide.    There are more scholarly terms, too: pleamar when the water laps round your neck, and bajamar when it’s licking round your ankles.

To go against the tide is ir a contracorriente because Spanish individualists fight the current instead but conformists who go with the flow let themselves be carried along with it: ir con la corriente. 

Fine phrases like a rising tide of indignation retain marine connections with una oleada de indignación, literally a wave of indignation.  A tidal wave was always un maremoto which a spot of straight translation reveals as a seaquake although this is increasingly replaced by the internationally recognisable tsunami. 

Marejada sounds faintly seasick and produces its own quota of wooziness, since it is a heavy sea and the diminutive marejadilla indicates the same state of affairs, only less so. 

Returning to marear and its associations with having drunk more than is wise it is fitting that a Spanish hangover is una resaca, whose principal translations are undercurrent and undertow, plus the additional landlocked definitions of reaction and backlash.  Certainly no-one would question their aptness on those awful mornings when you celebrated too well the night before, when you’re all at sea, shipwrecked too, and the only words you’re capable of uttering are ¡vaya mareo!