Photo by ms. Tea
On a recent Friday while we were under house arrest thanks to a major snow storm in the middle of the spring, the following conversation took place at the dinner table:
Papá: ¿Lo quieres con aguacate? – wanting to know if Vanessa wanted a tortilla chip with some avocado.
Vanessa: ¿Ah?
Papá (realizing that’s not the word Vanessa knows for avocado): ¿Lo quieres con palta?
Vanessa: Papá, ¿qué dijite? – Huh?
Papá: Aguacate.
Vanessa: ¿A-GUA-CA-TE??
Papá: Si.
Vanessa: ¿Qué eso?
Papá: Es lo mismo que palta.
The wheels of my daughter’s brain start turning as she tries to process what just happened. Palta is the same thing as aguacate. Just another name for it.
Papá: Aguacate es lo mismo que palta.
And then my husband goes on to explain that there is only ONE country in the world that calls an avocado a palta. It’s not true, but w-h-a-t-e-v-e-r. That one country happens to be the one I hail from, so that’s all that matters.
All kidding aside, though, this is an actual topic of debate in our house. My husband, who was born and raised in Puerto Rico, taught Vanessa to say ‘bobo‘ (binky) and I had to give in because as a baby, that was an easier word for Vane to pick up than ‘chupón‘ – as we say it in Perú.
Unlike English which has variances depending on whether you’re British, North American or Australian; Spanish has as many variances as the countries where it’s spoken. In other words, the word for pig, for example, could be chancho, cerdo or puerco – depending on which country you’re from (Perú, México, Puerto Rico – respectively). Oh, yeah, I forgot marrano.
PARTIAL LIST OF PERUVIAN/PUERTO RICAN WORDS IN OUR HOUSE:
- timón||guia — steering wheel
- plátano||guineo (we actually use banana – kind of universal, no?)
- chupón||bobo — pacifier
- palta||aguacate — avocado
- poto||nalgas — butt
- calata||desnuda — naked
- arete||pantalla — earring
- foco||bombilla — lightbulb
- basurero (tacho)||zafacón — trash can
- paraguas||sombrilla — umbrella
- naranja||china — orange
- autobus||guagua — bus
- cometa||chiringa — kite
- cañita||sorbeto — straw
The list goes on… And I haven’t even included the dozens of words which are completely innocuous for some of us and are vulgarities for others. Such as bicho which means any type of insect for Peruvians and lots of other Latin Americans, but the crude name for male genitals for Boricuas, like my husband. Still, I find it kind of crazy that I couldn’t tell Vanessa “Cuidado con ese bicho,” if there’s an insect near where she’s playing…
What to do? Apparently, nothing. It’s really no big deal, except that it’s kind of difficult for me to call something a name I have never called it for the sake of not confusing Vanessa. In other words, I can do it, but it doesn’t come natural. The interesting thing is that now that she’s a bit older and has started to figure a lot of things out, she actually likes to ask: ¿tú cómo lo llamas? - which I find utterly amazing.
Kids… what can I say?
So, even though when she was younger I used to cave in to go with the easier-to-pronounce word, I am able now to teach her that there are actually many ways of saying the same thing in Spanish and furthermore, that there are lots of ways of saying the same thing in different languages…
Can you share the words that are on your list and how you are dealing with it?
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My kids and I generally speak Spanish we have learned in Mexico, but their current Spanish teacher is from Argentina. It seems like food words are often confusing…the teacher would talk to them about birthday “tortas,” and the boys pictured sandwiches. Another time they were enthusing about all the flavors of “nieve” they could eat in Cuernavaca, and I had to explain to their confused maestra that they were talking about what most people might call “helado”.
And, like you mentioned with “bicho,” I still haven’t figured out a good way to explain to my four year old why he should probably talk about his “chamarra” instead of his “chaqueta” when we’re in Mexico!
Now that I read all these comments, I realize I have a lot more words to add to the original list. I actually forgot to include torta, which also means cake for us – just like Argentineans. My husband calls it bizcocho…
Ja, ja, “chaqueta” is a good one… In Perú, we actually call a sweater a “chompa.” Go figure…
My husband calls a pig a coche and I keep telling him it’s a cerdo! He also teaches her brincar and most of our Spanish books and cds use saltar… To me a pig is a pig and jump is jump lol. Sometimes I change the word in the book, like cerdo, to coche so she will know what I am talking about, but like you, I am now trying to teach her that there are just different words for the same thing. I guess if they can figure out that pig means cerdo, then puerco can mean cerdo too.
@Tricia-LOL on your boys picturing sandwiches when the teacher says “Torta”-that’s hilarious.
They also should refrain from telling their Argentinean teacher how much they love “cajeta” (for those who don’t know, it’s the word for a delicious goat milk’s candy in Mexico and slang for female genitals in Argentina!)
It really can get confusing and funny.
@Roxana-Between “Guineo” (El Salvador) and “plátano” (Mex) we also chose BANANA! Jaja! She actually sings it: bananananá!
@Kalen-books can get so confusing! Right now we’re reading the “Teo descubre el mundo” series. It’s from Spain and I’m constantly having to find the words she can understand: canguro-nana/culete-nalgas and so many more.
Ahhhhh….now this is a topic that gets my blood going!!!!! As a native born English-speaking girl who had the great fortune to live in Chile, in Mexico and then marry a man whose mom is from Cuba and father from Spain, I have so many palabras for so many English words that my little head spins sometimes!
I will never forget when my middle school ages son came home one day with such pride after telling his Spanish teacher (who hailed from Panama) that she was telling the class the incorrest pronunciation of the Spanish letter for “y.” Oh my! He went on to tell her that his mom sings it a totally different way in her “Alfabeto español” song, so he knew it was not his teacher’s way!!!!!!! You can imagine we had some explaining to do!
I so get the different dialects, I so respect the passion of each country, and I so sometimes am over having people tell me we should have sung the word “marrón” for “brown” instead of “café.” I simply tell them it’s all about the children learning the fun way and not being PC (politically correct)!
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We have filled our house with “libros de palabras” since my son was young and have always used it as almost a game, finding how many different ways there are to say one thing…now he likes keeping track of new ones we discover through friends or books. I have always used “my” word when I speak but if they chose to adopt another I just let it be and am glad that are so interested in the language. Plus we have friends from many different Spanish speaking countries so its a topic we all chat about often and our kids love sharing vocab. Some we run into often are:
balde/cubo
cometa/papalote
popote/sorbeto
plátano/banana
And really, even just within North American there are some pretty big differences in English vocab just depending what area/state you are in. I just look at it as the fun/complicated life of language which is always growing and changing and yet another way to teach about differences and similarities…
LOL isn’t it great that we can laugh about just one language?? I remember when I was younger and I went to Europe with a friend, after visiting all this different countries, we got all excited when Barcelona, Spain was just minutes away because now we could talk in Spanish! ha! we forgot that they also speak Catalan, so we couldn’t understand 80 % of the menu in the restaurant, not to mention all this different words, in some way we survived!! and this experience change the concept I had about language… until I moved to USA!! I think it’s great that our kids are expose to so many different ways to express in just one language, and USA seems to be the perfect place!!
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Great post! This is a topic that I encounter on a daily basis, not just with my kids but also as a pediatrician with my patients. I speak “Colombian” spanish and most of my patients hail from Mexico. The kids have no idea what I’m going to do when I tell them that I’m going to examine their “barigas”, I have to say “panza” which to me is basically a cow’s stomach. They also tend to call their entire leg their “pie” instead of just the foot. So they come in w/ “dolor de pie” and it ends up being their thigh or knee….so confusing to me. LOL
On a lighter note, after college I went to spain to visit a friend of mine. I was a the local butcher shop w/ my friends dad and he asked the butcher how his wife was doing. The butcher replied “esta constipada”. OMG, wow, now that’s getting personal w/ your butcher… to me that meant his wife was constipated…nothing like discussing bowel habits with your butcher…come to find out it meant that the butcher’s wife had a cold. LOL. Also on that same visit, my friend’s dad was chasing his 2 year old granddaughter around the house after she escaped from bath time. He was telling her, “te voy a cojer el culo”. To me that was so vulgar (culo being a bad word for butt) but come to find out that’s totally acceptable.
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Funny stories, Steph! I hadn’t even thought about the word “constipada” for a long time and then Vanessa and I were listening to the children’s song: “Tengo una muñeca vestida de azul” and it came up. I don’t know if you’ve heard it but it goes on to say “la saqué de paseo y se me constipó.” Immediately, it took me back to when I was a child growing up in Perú… … My grandma still uses that word and it does mean the same thing as “resfriada.” So it’s not only in Spain…
Now, the other word, that would be the case ONLY in Spain, I think… which is kind of funny if you think about it, since that’s where Spanish came from, so how did “culo” become a bad word for all other Spanish speakers? Who knows? I love languages…
I love this post! There are so many word that although mean the same thing are said differently. I am a Latina from el caribe and our Spanish seems to be different than that of the rest of the Latino community. Some say habichuelas others say frijoles – at the end of the day we seem to understand what the other is saying
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I love this! Very interesting… Although I’m glad my husband speaks english and at home we just say venezuelan words in spanish, hahaha! I didn’t imagine how confusing it can be to have 2 latin parents from different countries!
But I do say some mexican words because we live in LA and everybody goes mostly with the mexican slang so I think it will be good for him and I know he’ll catch on when he meets other latin kids around!
We have a different way of saying BANANA which is CAMBUR! Adrian already says it.
We loove to call any insect a bicho!!
But overall I think he will have the venezuelan accent, One day I was asking him: Qué es eso? But the way we talk is kind of like this: Quejeso? And he said it exactly the same! Cute
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I know exactly what you mean, Dariela! Los Peruanos decimos mucho “pues,” usually at the end of a sentence such as “ya sube, pues!” I never even thought of that until I heard my daughter use it exactly how I do!!! Me quedé helada y casi me muero de la risa porque hasta tiene la entonación y todo – and I didn’t teach her.
I love this topic, too. My husband speaks quite a bit of Spanish but is not fluent, so he goes with whatever I say. I use the words that come natural to me, but I do talk about the different ways to say things they’ve learned in books.
I think they might actually have an advantage, growing up around Spanish speakers from many different countries instead of Spanish speakers from a single country, like I did. They’ve learned a lot from their Salvadorean nanny and use many words she’s taught them, like “grama” for grass, which I don’t use.
The title of this post made me laugh because it reminded me of when I interpreted at a hospital. I loved interpreting for patients who where about to undergo brain surgery or a liver transplant, but I absolutely dreaded interpreting for patients during their appointments with the dietitian. It was all about paltas and choclo and judías verdes and solomillo and pomelos and a million other things I’d never heard of. Food is complicated!
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What to do? Apparently, nothing. It’s really no big deal, except that it’s kind of difficult for me to call something a name I have never called it for the sake of not confusing Vanessa.
Nothing? Not really. La clave aqui es no preocuparse por las confusiones. Lo ideal es proporcionarle al nino la mayor cantidad y variedad de situaciones en las que diferentes palabras, construcciones y significados difieren. Los ninos aprenden solo a discriminar los usos y los significados, de la misma manera que un nino bilingue (de verdad) aprende cuando y con que personas usar cada idioma.
Bai viet chat luong lam, ngay nao minh cung vao xem luon.
You miss some words for pig: cochino and lechón. I have always used cerdo or lechón when talking about food and used puerco or rarely guarro (after a long summer in Spain) to insult someone.
I’m so happy, I just found this website.
I’m peruvian too and my husband american. We are raising our 3yr old daughter bilingual using the OPOL method. I was laughing when I read about the word “palta”, so funny, everybody else in latinamerica call it AVOCADO.
I have to say that is being very difficult and sometimes frustating when Sofia responds to me in english. I talk to her just in spanish and make her repeat everyhting in spanish. Sometimes she gets frustated when I tell her “MAMI NO HABLA INGLES, MAMI HABLA ESPANOL” but I guess I’m confusing her a little bit when she sees me talking to my husband in english =?
I recently heard Sofia saying YAAAAA MAMI, I get so happy when she uses peruvian expression (although I know she sould learn the correct use of the language.
Excellent blog you have got here.. It’s difficult to find excellent writing like yours nowadays. I really appreciate individuals like you! Take care!!
Por largo tiempo estuve averiguando que paises usaban la palabra palta. Ahora ya se que es Chile y Peru. Gracias
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This is so funny and true since I’m half Puerto Rican (my dad) and half Peruvian (my mom) sometimes they would make fun of eachother of how they say things differently jajajaja but they don’t mind what word we use when we say something they understand since they have learned how to say it different ways because of each other. It’s quite interesting actually thanks for the post it reminds me more of home.