 |
| A Buenos Aires colectivo of the 60s |
In my Argentina slang is called lunfardo. There are words that I can use that no Spanish speaking person from another country can understand. Some of these words are not necessarily slang. A tortilla in Argentina and in Spain and most of Latin America is an egg omelette. We all know what tortillas are in Mexico.
In Mexico you heat water to make tea in a cafetera. In Argentina that is a pava. A pave is a female turkey and the kettle is called that as the neck of the kettle resembles that of a turkey. A camión In Mexico is a truck and a bus, in Argentina that’s a truck and the bus is a colectivo. In Northern Mexico a truck is a troca.
The worst problem happens with bad words. This is especially the case with the papaya. In Cuba a papaya is what women have that men don’t have down there. In Argentina the fruit is a mamón which in Mexico is a co..sucker. Mexican caramel made with goat's milk is called a cajeta and a pack of cigarettes is a cajetilla. In my Argentina those two words are what women have down there that we men do not.
The most problematic Mexican slang is that many of the words are of Indigenous origin. A petate is a sort of wide straw matt. When people died in the old days they were placed on them. Thus to petatear means to die.
Even more problematic is the word for mother in Mexico . This is madre. For reasons that few understand “te voy a dar en la madre” which means literally “I am going to give it to you in your mother” is about harming you in some fictitious and unknown spot in one’s body that cannot be located. Then “a toda madre” means really good or neat. If something is “padre” it is really very good. Mamá is the obvious but "¡mamacita! is what you yell at a beautiful woman on the street.
I could go on at length but I will stop.
But I do remember lots of Texan slang and bad grammar. I had a Mexican/ American classmate in Austin, Texas in the late 50 who instead of throwing a rock (I am going to stone him) he would say rock him. It was in Austin that I first heard, “Careful when you go to 6th Street as you do not want to get rolled by a spick.”
