Vosotros - Ustedes
I can speak only about
Puerto Rican Spanish, but there are enough differences to keep one busy. Yes, the
absence of
vosotros ( = you
plural familiar) does appears to be serious on the face of it, but no one seems to miss it much. Speakers merely
switch gears from
familar to
polite and use
ustedes ( = you plural polite). I have been assured on more than one occasion that
usted ( = you polite singular) is used only when addressing the
governor or
president. Still, the kids I taught used
usted with me and I have no
political aspirations.
Dropped Letters
The most striking lack is the
pronunciation of the
letter s, which
habit, they tell me, comes from the
Canary Islands. In fact, I was told that
careful observance of all the
s sounds might prompt the
comment quiere tirarse un pe'o más alto que su culo ( = he wants to
fart higher than his
ass hole), which is one
colorful way a Puerto Rican can say that the guy is putting on airs. If you listen quite carefully, it seems to me that the letter
s isn't dropped, but
converted to a
glottal stop so that
estos ( = Eng. these) becomes e:to: . This
peculiarity is very
useful to
gringos who are never sure whether the familiar or polite form of the verb should be used. The only difference between the polite
dónde vive? and the familiar
dónde vives? ( = Eng. Where do you live?) is that pesky letter
s. If you
swallow it, who knows whether you have been unduly familiar or overly polite or a
master of Spanish
nuance in Puerto Rico.
The letter
d also seems to get short shrift in Puerto Rican Spanish. Take the word
pe'o ( = Eng. fart), mentioned above. The first time I heard it I ran to my trusty dictionary and couldn't find it, even though my informant assured me it was a real Spanish word. When he gave the meaning, I looked up "fart" and found
pedo. Poor
d had been dropped, as it is in most past participles. Thus
llamado ( = Eng. called) becomes
llama'o
An example will demonstrate how a
gringo can easily become confused. We were walking through the Botanical Gardens in Río Piedras, when a little girl ran past us, yelling what I thought to be, "Mami, kaka." Now,
kakar is kiddy talk for " to
defecate." Providing the missing
d, I had the past participle
kakada which I thought meant that the little girl needed to have her diaper changed. However, we moved a bit further and saw a small waterfall, which in Spanish would be a
cascada. I provided the
d, but it also needed an
s to make perfect sense.
Of course, I've been guilty of going in the other direction. A kind of stew with rice is called
asopao. If there were the
verb asopar ( = to be soupy) and there isn't, the
past participle would be
asopado. Naturally I ordered an
asopado and received quite a bit of
ribbing.
Vocabulary
There must be 1,000s of
words that have other
meanings and
significations in Puerto Rico. The first word that comes to mind is
chulo, which is most places is a "
pimp." On the island a
baby can also be
chulo, meaning "cute." If the baby is exceptionally
chulo the women will exclaim,
"ay, que nice." The
context in which I first heard
m'ijo ( = my son) was a
shocker. I
overheard a
woman use it when speaking with her
husband. I honestly thought she was having an
incestuous relationship with her
son.
As I mentioned elsewhere, the word
bicho in the Spanish speaking world means "insect", except in Puerto Rico where it is a
rude word for
penis. One of the
students at the
school where I
taught brought back from
Mexico a
can of
insect spray which had the word
matabicho prominently displayed. To a Mexican the word meant "bug killer," but to a Puerto Rican it read "
dick destroyer." By the end of the day all the boys had wet
crotches that smelled of insect spray.
In the same
vein, but in reverse, we have one innocent word,
concha, which means "conch shell". It is the name of a large
hotel in the
tourist area of San Juan. Often large numbers of Cuban
men from
Miami have their pictures in front of the sign. Why? The word in Cuban Spanish is considered extremely
vulgar and means "
vagina." You rarely win in Spanish.
The Puerto Rican loves his
language and finds great amusement in playing with it. I've often said to visitors, "scratch a Puerto Rican and you'll find a
poet... and a
comedian." We had a noted
female entertainer with an
prominent backside (well,
enormous female backsides are very popular). She was selected to
advertise a
automoble coolant on TV. Why? Because one word for any kind
rump is
culo and everytime she used the word "
coolant" she'd wiggle her
ass. It was kind of a double whammy.
The differences between European and Puerto Rican Spanish are considerable and are a source of continual
amusement. During the time I lived there, I wondered what
mainlanders talked about in the States. The language was one of the
gringo's favorite
topics of
conversation.