Thursday, March 26, 2009

Spanish in Buenos Aires

This afternoon our Spanish teacher, Alejandro, wrote the following on the board:

Please avoid the verb coger* in Buenos Aires, just say "tomar."

to be excited: estar emocionado/a
(Never say "estoy excitado/a," except in sexual occasions.)

to be embarrassed: tengo verguenza
(avoid estoy embarazado/a except in the case you're pregnant)

Someone then asked if "estoy embarazado" would ever be correct, because a man can't be pregnant. (A woman would say, "Estoy embarazada.") We then got into a discussion about the pregnant man in Bend, Oregon, who my friend Aaron met once while Aaron was waiting with his wife for an ultrasound.

Oh, and to those who inquired after my subway-fainting incident, tengo verguenza pero no estoy embarazada.

*In Buenos Aires, coger means, in the immortal words of Ralphie in "A Christmas Story," the "Queen Mother of dirty words." In other places it means "to take" or "to catch," like a bus. Noted.

1 comment:

Bunting said...

My friend H. and I were explicitly warned by our high-school Spanish teacher that "coger" was to be scrupulously avoided in Argentina/around Argentines. Big mistake; our friend C. is from Buenos Aires, so we RAN down to the junior lounge to see if busting out a "cojete" would get a response. And boy did it. Hee.