It’s Hip to be Square in Spanish (Part I)

Ok, so I’ll come clean. When I first started taking spanish lessons I thought I was pretty cool. I loved learning new words and understanding things which just a few days ago would have been double Dutch to me. It made me feel on top of the world when I managed to string together a few words and the person I was speaking didn’t stare at me blankly.

To add to this, I think I mentioned a while back that I had decided to learn Spanish by osmosis, using music as one of the great features of this approach. This meant that I had a brief spell of speaking almost entirely with phrases taken from songs and it lent me an extra veneer of coolness, but it didn’t last long I am afraid.

Slang Problems

One of the problems with slang is that you need to be immersed in it to be able to use it properly. For example, when I returned to the UK after a year away and saw the word “chav” splashed about everywhere I had no idea what it meant and didn’t make the cultural associations which other Brits did when they heard it said. In Spanish, I learnt the word “guay” in Spain. It means ”cool” but no one in South America uses it and even in Spain my inappropriate use of the word led to some smirks from the locals. Imagine a foreign tourist in the UK describing a bowl of soup as “groovy” or “bonzer” and you will see how this kind of word can be badly misused so easily.