. . . right in the middle of a doctor’s appointment you’re interpreting, at least if your day goes anything like mine did. It was just a routine allergies visit filled with words I hear and interpret almost daily: pollen, dust mite covers, saline solution, antihistamines, mold. So routine I almost do it on autopilot. And then the doctor said a phrase that jolted me awake:
hard freeze
Hard freeze? She had said something like, You can continue taking your medicines until the first hard freeze in November or so. And I went all Porky Pig, stuttering and stammering like an idiot. It’s so uncharacteristic of me to lose my cool, but lose it I did. Hard freeze? I think in ordinary circumstances I would have known what that was and recognized it, but it totally caught me off guard in this medical context. Hard freeze? A good description of what happened to my brain at that moment. Try as I might, I simply couldn’t thaw it in time.
Hard freeze? The more I scrambled, the further away I was getting from an answer. I was grasping at straws and not catching any of them. I couldn’t even picture a hard freeze in my mind–I just saw snowflakes on the ground every time I tried, and that wasn’t any help. Sometimes I wonder if I’m a city mouse or a country mouse, and this was one moment where it became embarrassingly obvious how removed I’ve become from the intricacies of nature and her rhythms. What takes place during a hard freeze, anyway? Or even just a freeze? I would settle for that. I can do a brain freeze, a hiring freeze, a credit freeze, a computer freeze– but an actual honest-to-goodness freeze? It had been far too long since I’d experienced one of those in English, and forget about Spanish. I lived in the city of eternal spring in Colombia. The book I’ve been reading is taking place in the sweltering heat of the Colombian coast. The music in my car right now is joropo from the Colombian plains–not much freezing going on in any of those places. I guess I’ll have to go scale some snow-capped mountains in Chile to authentically experience and understand a Spanish freeze.
I ended up doing my best to explain the idea to the patient, but I was frosty–I mean fuzzy–on it myself. So, I came home with my tail between my legs and am now trying to do penance. I will never let myself be caught off guard by a freeze again–hard, soft, or anywhere in between.
It looks like a freeze is una helada. Looking on linguee.com, I see hard freeze translated as helada fuerte. Hopefully that would do the trick. Wiktionary defines a hard freeze as: A freeze sufficiently long and severe to destroy seasonal vegetation and lead to ice formation in standing water and hard ground. Three degrees Celsius below freezing is considered a threshold in the US. If I were interpreting at a gardener’s convention, sure, I’d make certain that everyone was clear on exactly what kind of freeze we were talking about. I don’t think meteorological exactness was necessary today, though. (But speak up if you don’t agree!)
I see that frost on the ground is escarcha. Ahh. Now I do have some experience with escarcha. When buying a refrigerator in Bogotá, I remember the units at the stores boasting on their tags that they were anti-escarcha– no frost. I’ve also heard the word used for glitter. Escarchar exists as a verb; a rather ugly one, to my mind. Thinking about freezers in Colombia, I remember once sticking a few pairs of new shoes stuffed with water-filled bags in my freezer in Medellín to stretch them out. When someone later opened it, their eyes bugged out of their head when they saw my footwear just chilling out in the freezer as if that were the most natural place for them to be. Crazy Americans.
Frostbite? Congelación, congelamiento, quemadura por frío, sabañones (chilblains). Even in English, it’s congelatio in medical terminology.
(I’m sure there’s nothing like pairing an ice-cold Frosty with a hot, steaming Brosty [a popular name for fried chicken chains in Medellín].)
Jack Frost? Try Juanito Escarcha. Frosty the Snowman? Frosty el hombre de nieve, or Frosty el muñeco de nieve. Robert Frost? Roberto Escarcha. Easy peasy.
Just when I was starting to confiarme, it was good to get thrown for a loop. What was the last word to utterly discombobulate you?
(I know my play on words with A Man for All Seasons was a bit obscure, but if you don’t get the one in this title . . . ¡debería darte pena!)
I went to a party the other night, and we were all having a merry old time. One of the guests started playing the guitar, and someone asked if he knew any songs by Ricardo Arjona. No, not Arjona, I pleaded. ¡Es muy cursi!Judging by the immediate chorus of indignant gasps and protestations, I had touched a nerve. More than merely defensive of the singer, they took issue with my epithet of choice. ¿Y qué tiene de malo eso, ser cursi? I didn’t stop there. Es más, I said. I’ve found that Hispanics on the whole tend to be much more cursi than Americans. Well, that was it. Se armó la de Troya. The women were then up in arms. Oh, what does she know about love? She’s just a cold, heartless gringa. How could she ever understand the way we Latinos feel and express ourselves? No, they didn’t actually say those things, but it’s what their whelps were basically communicating. As we’re all friends, I took their ribbing in stride. They wouldn’t let me live it down, though–the rest of the night, they kept making a big deal about all the music being CURSI and then looking at me as if to apologize for offending my stony artistic palate.
I wanted to retirar lo dicho immediately, and not because of the outcry from my friends. I knew that no feelings had been hurt, and I still stand by what I said—Ricardo Arjona is cheesy. Immensely so. And his music is not my cup of tea. But if someone wanted to, I’m sure they could lampoon many of my beloved Hispanic singers for being cursias well–Silvio Rodríguez, Julio Jaramillo, Chavela Vargas, etc. Why does cursi get such a bad rap? And what do we reveal about ourselves when we hiss and glare at this adjective as if it were the devil?
Cursi means cheesy, especially in the sense of mushy, sentimental, sappy, lovey-dovey. Cloyingly sweet, sickeningly sweet. Empalagoso, hostigante, acaramelado. Someone who is cursi oozes miel–honey–and is thus meloso. Think of the Seinfeld episode where he and his girlfriend called each other Schmoopy, and you’ll have a good idea of cursi.
It’s very subjective, though. I guess everyone has a certain degree to which they can tolerate mushiness. Predictably, it’s always other people’s sappiness that gets on your nerves; one almost never views their own actions as cursi unless their family and friends start giving them a hard time about their soft side. That is, we’re all hypocrites when it comes to being cheesy. All of us, of course, but the Spanish speakers.
I had a cursi friend in Bogotá named Jhon Carlos. Here’s how I described him to a friend back in 2010: “He’s kind of awkward, though awfully sweet and tender, also kind of cheesy and… eager. :)” Yes; very cheesy, this Jhon Carlos. And very eager–muy intenso–but so genuine and sincere. He filled my inbox for years with emails full of virtual flowers, cliché professions of love, and lots of melosidad. Although I rolled my eyes at the trite and sappy ways that he expressed his feelings for me, I respected him for being so heartfelt and unabashedly cheesy. O sea, for not holding back and for not apologizing for his cheesiness in an effort to put up a barrier of self-protection in case of rejection or mockery. People who dare to bare their hearts make themselves easy targets, but who wants to be the grinch who goes around ridiculing people for attempting to find and then luxuriate in love? Insecure people, that’s who.
My first boss in Colombia, Alba, once gave me a painfully cursi stuffed lion attached to a fuzzy cup that had two hearts on it and had HAPPY EVERYDAY emblazoned across the top. I was touched. The examples I could give of cursi-ness that I observed in Colombia could go on and on, and I’ve noticed it among Hispanic friends from other countries as well. And it’s one of my favorite things about them–I love my Hispanic friends and the Latin American culture at large for being so cursi. I do. No, I still prefer not to receive stuffed animals from love interests seeing as I exited childhood decades ago, but I will take a cheesy, over-the-top, melodramatic love any day over some serious, respectable, safe, buttoned-down alternative. Yawwwwn. ¡Qué pereza!
Hell, one could date Pablo Neruda and even find him cursi were they to insist on militancy against all sentimentality. Where’s the fun in that, though? And, who knows, maybe even Neruda got exhausted sometimes from the great pressure to be original and not cursi–after a long day of racking his brain for inspired, fresh symbols of love for his poems, perhaps the most he could muster up for Matilde was a little teddy bear he’d pick up at a nearby store. Maybe she even requested them, having been up to her eyeballs in sonnets and odes. There’s nothing wrong with being a little cursi from time to time, and if it’s your MO, well more power to you so long as your partner’s on the same cursi wavelength. Each set of lovers forms their own language and lexicon composed of their significant symbols and code words, and who really cares if some fulano scoffs and labels them as cursi? Ain’t nobody got time for that.
I also think of a gift I once received in Colombia of a set of pillows, one of which had my name crookedly embroidered inside a heart. You can probably guess whose name was in the other heart. As far as cursi goes, I’m pretty sure those pillows take the cake. And yet, very much out of character, I loved those pillows and not in spite of their adamant cheesiness but rather because of it. They were sincere, they were made and given with so much love, and their very existence was a brave, unironic, and unambivalent celebration of something very beautiful and worthy of praise, even if it were to later prove ephemeral. What am I, too good for cursilería? Of course not. Love is always worth celebrating, albeit imperfectly, albeit cheesily, albeit precipitately, albeit years after the fact.
In sum: What is love if not cursi? Love is supremely sentimental and gushy and ridiculous. And love means leaving your self-consciousness at the door, as well as your ego. I feel like you’re not really in love if you’re not regularly making a fool of yourself! But why hide our cheesiness within the safe confines of relationships? I admire people who can unblushingly own their feelings, hopes, and even disappointments without pussyfooting or pretending to not care all that much anyway. Although cursi people could use some work in the originality department, at least they care in the first place. There’s a lamentable epidemic of nonchalance and numbness and self-absorption these days, and cheesiness is a much better alternative to these terrible modes of subpar living. The way I see it, life is about caring. And since people have been caring for millennia, it’s awfully hard to express your care in a way that millions of other people haven’t already done. So, go ahead and be cursi. Those who would snarl and say bah humbug and rain on your parade have their own issues–just feel sorry for them. Ricardo Arjona, I still don’t like your music, but I respect you for sharing your cursi soul with us. There are certainly worse ways to be.
I thought for a long time about how to incorporate Valentine’s Day into a post. Last year I wrote about an anti-Valentine’s Day backlash in Colombia, and that old post has been peered at by many fresh pairs of eyes in the last week or so. If you want to learn Valentine’s Day or love vocabulary, I’m certain that lists abound on the internet. The world doesn’t need another post on any of that, though. I suppose, then, that I wanted to say something explicit and non-evasive for once about love. The fact is that there is love brimming over in every one of my posts here; each one is an encrypted love letter, some of those valentines more thinly veiled than others. You probably just don’t catch the allusions, quotes, or entreaties. Raised very religiously, I always find myself wanting to confess. I guess I wanted to come clean with my motives. Maybe all writers, though, have their secret reasons for writing. Perhaps a great deal of us write to many what we wish we had the courage to say to one. Like Gabriel García Márquez, soy escritora por timidez.
Speaking of García Márquez, I started to reread El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera) yesterday. Does there exist a book that is more romantic than this one? No? I rest my case. Not that I’ve read every book out there ni mucho menos, but I still feel secure in making that bold statement. For me, its romanticism can’t be topped. To be sure, I mean all the meanings of romantic, both good and bad. However, I don’t mean romantic as in mushy, kiss-kiss, chocolate and flowers and stuffed animals and all that other cursilería. For better or for worse, this book is romance par excellence. If you’re the romantic type like I am, it may be somewhat of a dangerous read. Of course, I discovered that when it was already far too late. In any case, I already had all of those silly notions safely dwelling in me, so it’s not like the book put them there. It certainly didn’t disabuse me of any of them, though. Ojo, let no one read it as a how-to on love or happiness unless you’re content to wait several decades.
I’ve written once before about rereading Cien años de soledad. A difference with this reread, however, is that I’m reading the same copy of El amor en los tiempos del cólera that I read the first time. (I chose to leave my beautiful copy of Cien años de soledad in Colombia.) The book’s certainly seen its better days. It’s battered and stained, the spine has fallen off, and you can pluck certain pages right out, but it has love and character and a story. I bought it at a used bookstore in downtown Medellín the day before I decided to move back to the U.S. In fact, I bought two books that day, and it was directly because of one very specific word on the first page of the other book that my ex and I decided to call it quits. Of course, I left that book behind as well. We’d gone to that bookstore specifically to look for El amor en los tiempos del cólera, and I just chanced upon the other book while browsing solo in the very cramped and low-ceilinged upstairs section of the bookstore. Who knows, maybe I’d still be living in Colombia if I hadn’t decided to read GGM’s second most popular book or hadn’t wandered up that creaky staircase to curiosear. La curiosidad mató al gato; just like in English, curious cats in Latin America meet a very lamentable fate. What if, what if, what if . . .
Earlier today I reread a fabulous, prize-winning essay out there on rayar libros–writing in books. Do our marginal scribblings give us away? Are the passages that we passionately underline emblems of our souls? What can you learn about a person by reading a book they’ve read? Can you communicate with someone through a book? What about a blog? Why do we spill our hearts in the most ineffectual places? Vaya usted a saber . . .
I’ve always loved “Marginalia” by Billy Collins, a poem exalting the art of peripheral commentary. Here’s the last part:
Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page
A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- “Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.
“How vastly my loneliness was deepened, / how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed . . .” Yes. If this isn’t an effective apologia for marginalia, I don’t know what would be.
What does one find in my books? If they’re in Spanish, hundreds of definitions. Are these the most representative messengers of who I am? Maybe so. Besides vocabulary words, what did I underline in El amor en los tiempos del cólera? ¿Qué me movió muchas fibras? Where did I feel myself most compenetrada, most aludida?
–Aprovecha ahora que eres joven para sufrir todo lo que puedas–le decía–, que estas cosas no duran toda la vida.*
Hoy, al verlo, me di cuenta que lo nuestro no es más que una ilusión.
–Es feo y triste–le dijo a Fermina Daza–pero es todo amor.*
. . . se consagraba a la pérdida del tiempo.
. . . nunca hubiera admitido la realidad de que Florentino Ariza, para bien o para mal, era lo único que le había ocurrido en la vida.
–Rico no–dijo–: soy un pobre con plata, que no es lo mismo.*
Florentino Ariza escribía cualquier cosa con tanta pasión, que hasta los documentos oficiales parecían de amor. Los manifiestos de embarque le salían rimados por mucho que se esforzara en evitarlo . . .*
Fermina Daza había rechazado a Florentino Ariza en un destello de madurez que pagó de inmediato con una crisis de lástima, pero nunca dudó de que su decisión había sido certera.
. . . la seguridad, el orden, la felicidad, cifras inmediatas que una vez sumadas podrían tal vez parecerse al amor: casi el amor. Pero no lo eran . . .
Esta cuca es mía.
Quería ser otra vez ella misma, recuperar todo cuanto había tenido que ceder en medio siglo de una servidumbre que no la había hecho feliz, sin duda, pero que una vez muerto el esposo no le dejaba a ella ni los vestigios de su identidad . . . quién estaba más muerto: el que había muerto o la que se había quedado.
. . . aquel amor irreal.
¿Por qué te empeñas en hablar de lo que no existe?
I put stars next to my favorite lines. People, don’t you see that you need to drop everything and read this book as soon as humanly possible?
Previous owners of the book had written a few things as well. Doña Duque G. is written in neat, feminine cursive in the margin of page 73, and pages 173, 273, and 373 say D ² G. at the top. While this initially seemed bewildering, I now see that my copy of the book has 473 pages. I guess that from these mile markers, Doña Duque could say to herself, Only four hundred more pages to go . . . only three hundred more pages . . . only two hundred more pages, ¡ya casi! Was this a punishment meted out to her by someone? Doña Duque G., the state will pardon your crime if you read this horribly schmaltzy mamotreto. Or did she shed a tear every time she reached the 73 mark as she was forced to realize that her time with the amazing book was rapidly running out and, similarly, she would one day cease as well?
On the title page, you can see that a name was once written in pencil before being erased. Oh, what wretched instruments erasers are! The same goes for White-out. They should be banned, rounded up, and destroyed. The last name looks like Posaada. No idea about the rest of it. One of the pages has also been ripped out. Naturally, this literary vandalism also speaks volumes. On the back of the book is an old yellow sticker that $15000←SET. As you can see, I clearly need to go back to Medellín to claim the rest of the set that was never given to me. I also want to buy more books and find more stories tucked inside stories.
So many people travel from country to country and spend so much money on counseling to find themselves, but maybe they would discover just as much, if not more, were they to pore through the books they’ve read and loved and see what stirred them in lives past. Perhaps life is too short to reread books when there are so many wonderful books out there, but it’s also far too long not to remember. And if books can be revisited and relived, then maybe certain times of life can also be returned to and even edited and reissued. If nothing else, marginalia lets us speak out of our loneliness and possibly right into that of a stranger who may even have something to shyly say back to us. Will anyone ever find our navel-gazing blog posts or heated Facebook comment discussions in 3013? Most likely not. Instead, immortalize yourself and emblazon your being on the future with a book and a pen. Someone will tenderly scrutinize it, someone will wonder, surely someone will read your barbaric yawp and care.
Once you got out of the classroom and began accumulating some practical fieldwork in Spanish, you probably started picking up on different ways that recordar and acordarse are used. Very good. I’m sure we could share notes all day about their various uses, but I want to zone in on just one. Did you notice how to say that something reminds you of something else? So did I, but it took me a while to get it down pat. There was this pesky little de that kept throwing me off, and it was entirely a figment of my imagination. Maybe you’re haunted by the phantom de as well. Let’s cast him out together.
To say remind, recall, bring to mind, etc., you simply use recordar. Not the kind of reminding where you make sure that someone doesn’t forget something– I’m referring to when something awakens memories of something else. Easy enough. However, resist the great temptation to say recordar de. I know– in English we say, this book reminds me OF my second grade teacher. That Pitbull song reminds me OF an old boyfriend. What he said reminded her OF her first time on a boat. It’s so very understandable to want to say me recuerda de in Spanish, and it’s so very wrong. I did it for a long time, and it was a hard habit to stamp out once I realized my error. If you do it, nip it in the bud! I wouldn’t want you to be speaking otherwise flawless Spanish and have this one little two-letter word be your shibboleth.
Some examples culled from old emails:
Me recuerda el verso de Neruda: “Tal vez no seremos tan locos, tal vez no seremos tan cuerdos”. It reminds me of that line of Neruda’s: “Maybe we won’t be so crazy, maybe we won’t be so sane.”
Ahora que mencionas Cien años de soledad, eso me recuerda tu multa en la biblioteca, ¿ya la pagaste?Now that you mention Cien años de soledad, that reminds me of your library fine– did you pay it? (No, I never did. Soy una morosa descarada. So sue me.)
I got the idea for this post while listening to the songEsto no es una elegía by Silvio Rodríguez the other morning. Here are some of the things that the woman he wasn’t elegizing reminded him of.
Tú me recuerdas el prado de los soñadores, el muro que nos separa del mar, si es de noche.
Tú me recuerdas las cosas, no sé, las ventanas donde los cantores nocturnos cantaban amor a La Habana.
Tú me recuerdas el mundo de un adolescente, un seminiño asustado mirando a la gente . . . la maldición, la blasfemia de un continente y un poco de muerte.
Of course, if the thing remembered is a person, you’ll have to say recordara, but that’s just because of the personal a that always precedes people when they’re direct objects.Nothing special about recordar.
Me recuerdas a mi hermano Drew.
You remind me of my brother Drew.
El olor de su loción le recordaba a su papá.
The smell of his cologne reminded her of her father.
I do so want to say recordar DE, and it takes some major self-control not to do so. Resist the urge. It’s worth it in the end.
Once you start thinking too hard about recordar v. acordarse and to remember v. to remind, I guarantee that your eyes will cross. It’s all the same thing, la misma vaina, but, oh, how they’re used differently. No wonder it’s challenging for those of us learning Spanish to stay on top of it; no wonder Spanish speakers learning English frequently have a terrible time keeping remember and remind straight. It’s always good to have a recorderis from time to time.
What about you? Did you get tripped up by this? Are there other examples of phrases where it’s difficult for you to avoid imitating English structures in your Spanish? If you’re a native Spanish speaker, anything to correct, clarify, comment on or concur with?
Delusions of grandeur? ¿Ya me las estoy dando de autora o qué? Actually, it’s not completely preposterous–I am going to write a book at some point, maybe several. You heard it here first. I’m going to do a lot of things in my life. You’ll be able to say Yo la conocía cuando . . .
My post on greetings in Spanish from a while back still brings a fair amount of traffic to my blog; I really ought to write a sister post on how to say goodbye in Spanish. I’ll write that post on Spanish farewells soonish, but today let’s focus on just one component of Spanish sendoffs: cuídate.
¡Cuídate!Take care!
Bueno, ¡chau! ¡Cuídate mucho! ¡Nos vemos! Gracias, lo mismo. Nos estamos hablando. Chau.
All right, bye! Take good care of yourself! See you later! Thanks, you too. We’ll be in touch. Bye.
Bueno, ya te dejo, me voy al sobre. Qué rico saber de ti. Que estés muy bien. Te cuidas. Un abrazo. Chau.
OK, well I’m gonna let you go. I need to go to bed. Great to hear from you. Hope you have a good week. All the best. A big hug. Bye.
If you know the song Con la frente marchita by the Spanish singer Joaquín Sabina, you’ve heard the line “Mándame una postal de San Telmo, adiós, ¡cuídate!”. Great song. (I prefer this cover.)
As you can see, you can also say Te cuidas. They’re exactly the same. I find cuídate to be more common, maybe because it rolls off the tongue a little more smoothly. I don’t want to split hairs, though. No partamos pelos. (That phrase doesn’t exist, but I coined it and used it semi-frequently in Colombia with someone who was willing to indulge me and my little bobadas.)
You can also say te me cuidas. This acknowledges more intimacy between you and your interlocutor. For me, it’s similar to the greeting ¿Cómo me le va? In both cases, you are dear to me and I actively care about your wellbeing. Therefore, how you’re doing has a direct impact on how I’m doing, and you taking care of yourself (or not) has implications for my own emotional state. I know, I love to overthink things. It should be my job.
It might be different in other countries, but if some Spanish language authority died and made me queen, I’d order my minions to use cuídate in just about every adieu save those with complete strangers. That is, use it with friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances, neighbors, and everyone whom you’ve ever cared about, albeit briefly, albeit barely. I always say cuídate to the patients in the hospital after our interpreting sessions. (Actually, I say cuídese.) Hey, I truly cared about them during that hour and wish them the best. I wouldn’t use it to say goodbye to a store clerk or a new, scary boss, but once we were on a first-name basis and were asking about each other’s family and life, I definitely would.
Just before I got to Colombia, I was in touch with a woman, Renee, whom I’d met in Bogotá a few years before. She’s American, but she’s lived almost her entire life in Latin America. And although her English is perfect, I would honestly say that Spanish comes more naturally to her. I remember her writing me this email that was extremely kind, helpful, and solicitous. And then she ended it with “Take care,” which totally threw me off. She wants me to take care? Huh? But I thought . . . I felt as if she’d just told me to go fry asparagus, that is, to get lost. To me, it connoted “Please don’t bother me again . . . Nice knowing ya . . . Best of luck with your life and everything . . . So long.” Gulp. And then I got to Colombia, heard cuídate this and cuídate that constantly, and I realized that so much Spanish had simply influenced Renee’s English. Once I got on the cuídate bandwagon, I too found it difficult to avoid telling people to take care in English, something I never used to say.
Once I divorced myself from the notion that “Take care” sounds uncaring in English (heavens knows why), I started to fall in love with cuídate and the meaning behind it: You are the only one responsible for your health and happiness, and you are the only one with any control over them. Even if for some reason someone were to try to make it their job to make you happy, they’d fail miserably. No amount of love or force can make anyone be happy. It can only come from within. So, if you want to be of any use to society and other people, you have the responsibility to take care of yourself and do whatever it takes for you to be happy. Other peoples’ needs, wants and expectations be damned! You can’t be of any use to anyone else if you’re just a sniveling sack of low self-esteem and frustration. Take care of yourself! Be happy! Anyone who truly cares about you will insist on these things. They can’t obligate you to live well, but they can at least bug you about it on a regular basis.
I know, I know; I take this phrase way too literally, just like I do with Gracias a Dios. Still, this is another case where I prefer and choose to be a literalist. When I say cuídate to you as we part, I’m actually barking out a command, and I only do so because I really care about you. Conversely, when you say it to me, I sit up at attention and am reminded that, oh yeah, the biggest favor I can do for others and myself is figure out what I need to be happy and then do/get those things. Like, this very minute. Word.
Bueno, ¡cuídense ustedes! Is speaking Spanish fluently something key to your happiness? Well, get on with it already. Are you deferring your happiness to the day that you can go live in Latin America for a few months? What’s stopping you? Is Spanish making your life miserable? Dump the bastard now and move on. It’s certainly not for everyone. If it does make you happy, though, like it does me, I hope you enjoy it this summer/winter/whatever season it is wherever you are. Ah, y si vives en Sudamérica me dices, pues quién sabe, puede que esté en tu ciudad durante mi gran recorrido de la zona en julio.
What about you? Were you already acquainted with cuídate? Are there any Spanish words or phrases where you can’t help but fixate on their literal meanings, even though they’re really just figures of speech or muletillas? Do you agree with me that we rarely say “Take care” in English, or is it just me? If you’re a native Spanish speaker, anything to correct, clarify, comment on or concur with?
