WHEN IN BUENOS AIRES… -part 6-

… speak as the porteños speak

UNHAPPY LITERAL TRANSLATIONS

NO > SÍ

Hacer un error > Equivocarse

Pasar un buen tiempo >  Pasarla bien

Tener una conversación >  Conversar

Es igual para mí > Me da igual

Trabaja/funciona para mí > Me queda bien

Tengo sentimientos por > Me pasan cosas con

Estar tarde > Llegar tarde

¿Qué tiempo es bueno? > ¿A qué hora está bien?

WHAT WOULD YOU THINK IF…?

It could be very interesting to know in how many different ways the same situation can be interpreted all over the world.

A friend of mine found this post on a forum from Munich. I would like to share it with you.

“This is so crazy, but I don’t care. I’m an American living in San Francisco (29yrs old, engineer, slim petite frame). About two weeks ago I was in Las Vegas for a conference and I met a man there from Munich and we spent one evening together before he departed back to Germany and myself to San Francisco the next day. We had a wonderful time together and I’m completely smitten. He’s in his mid forties with big blue eyes, dirty blond hair, and dusky white skin. This is perhaps a common look in Germany, but whatever, he was georgeous to me. I didn’t mind that he was probably a bit overweight for his frame (about 5 foot 10/11). I’m golden tan/very petite from South Pacific decent -attractive people say. To me he was beautifully exotic and I loved his style in clothes and views on life. He owns a company in construction or he’s a builder; I forget -profession doesn’t matter to me. I sent him tea roses (a bunch of 60) a week later to his office in Feldkirchen through Aquarelle. They were successfully delivered but I have not heard from him since. In any case, I don’t know what it’s like to date a German man, let alone one from Munich. I hear that in general, German men are not very flirtatious and that men in Munich tend too be more metrosexual than the rest of Germany. I want to win him over. Any suggestions? I’ve already decided to learn German and I plan to travel to Munich in 1 month. I want to give it my all before I finally lay it to rest. Thanks for the help It’s not like me to make such strong initiatives (i never do); there are many men here in San Francisco…just not the kind of man I met from Munich.”

ON FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

Sexual undercurrent between men and women is not an Argentinian invention. Why is it then that friendship among people of different sex is not as common, if not very unusual, as in many other places? (I would say that in Buenos Aires only 25% of men, at most, have women friends. As for the rest, there are two different groups:

a- Men who accept a friendship only with girls they do not feel attracted to (a guy once said, “only big girls can be friends”).
One funny Doritos commercial to highlight the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnNuv62gQ_E
(A guy is thinking how good it is to have a friend for so many years when she suddenly announces that she is going to have her breasts done and then he feels sad because he has lost a friend).

b- Men who do not accept under any circumstances a friendship with a girl (the same guy said, “behind every great friend there is a great failure”).
Another good Sprite commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNVh_S6cjb4
(Sprite warns innocent girls about the sexual intentions of their supposed friends).

Regarding women, it is more common that they believe in this kind of friendship. However, it is not unusual that, as the relationship develops, they start to have feelings (I myself used to be like that until someone showed me that friendships between men and women are sometimes underestimated, but they can be really special).

So, is it this way due to some kind of ontological matter (it just is)? Common sense says no.

The way I see it, it has a close connection to the fact that Argentina is a male chauvinistic country: there is a strong social mandate over men to be radically different from women, and vice-versa. Women are required to be sensual and passive and to keep their hair long and to dress femininely, and men are required to be “macho” and aggressive. This clear differentiation makes it difficult to consider the other sex as equal.

Under which circumstances is it possible to start a friendship with the other sex?

In the first place, both he and she have to feel like surrendering their defined roles; the girl has to stop sending seductive waves and the man has to neutralize his macho man feelings (as I said, this is possible but not probable in Buenos Aires).

Secondly, it helps if the relationship starts within the frame of an activity common to a group with the same interest (As I said, regarding friendship in general). Any first encounter with a person at night while having fun will only make it impossible. Any invitation to have dinner or to go to the cinema by a person you have just met is unlikely to lead to just a friendship.

Moral of the story:  In later posts I will talk about how to read between the lines. Meanwhile, keep one-to-one dates for people you are interested in or people you have known for some time.

ON FRIENDSHIP (a female point of view)

“Para el argentino, la amistad es una pasión y la policía una mafia”

 Jorge Luis Borges

 

Many times in my many conversations with foreigners they referred to a friend who afterwards turned out to be someone they have recently met and whom they didn´t actually know. That made me wonder if the word “friend”, whose meaning seems pretty obvious at first sight, is used in the same way everywhere. I concluded that it isn´t.

 

Therefore, before saying anything about friendship between men and women it becomes necessary to suit the word “amigo” to its meaning in our culture.

 

What do we mean when we talk about a friend? 

 

After some enquiries I have got to the following list:

 

You consider someone as a friend when:

 

1- you know every detail of them, especially their defects.

2- you have had at least one argument with them and you still love them.

3- you have shared many experiences, especially embarrassing or bad ones.

4- you trust them.

5- you have something in common.

 

also when

 

6- you feel like meeting them with no excuse in any moment and context.

7- you talk to them whenever something good or bad happens (no matter if it is embarrassing to tell).

 

Long distance friends or friends with children or a partner may modify 6 and 7 but abscence of 1 to 5 may change the way one referres to that relationship.

Those different names are:

 

- Un conocido: An aquaintance is someone you meet with some frequency due to some external causes but you are not especially fond of although you have a cordial treatment.

 

- Un amigo de: “A friend from…” is someone you also meet frequently, normally because you share some common activity (dancing, university, etc.). You feel afection for them but you don´t meet outside that activity neither you meet the two of you alone.

 

- Alguien que conocí: “Someone I met…” is someone you haven´t met enough times to know eachother but you felt that you would like to.

 

Any of them is usually formed in the frame of activities common to a group that forces people to meet regularly but it may turn into something more intense as it becomes more separate from the group.

 

No matter whether we talk about friendship between men and women or not, friendship itself is a serious matter. Porteños don´t use the word “amigo” lightly. Rather they categorize relationships in many accurate ways and those ways change as the requirements are being matched up.

 

Bonds between people arise in the social field, they fix with the time but become narrower only in the intimacy.

 

If you are trying to make some local friends (in porteños´ terms), start with the first step: look for some social and regular activity of you interest, be open with your feelings, be curious about others and finally, wait, time will do its work. 

HOWEVER…

…from time to time, life just puts you in the right place, at the right time, with the right person and magic happens.

PROLOGUE

I have always thought that the only thing one needed to bridge the cultural gap was showing one´s feelings in a transparent way. Love is a universal code.

Nevertheless, I misinterpreted my latest date´s display of afection and got too involved. Brokenhearted and with no guilty party, I blamed him for his inability to understand my feelings and act in consequence. Wasn´t it his responsibility to behave according to the rules of the society he is living in? If he were porteño I would have been right in feeling disappointed. Still, How could he have ever known it if not by making mistakes?

This is how the idea of this blog arose. Maybe transparency itself is a slippery slope and decoding is only valid if one has the knowledge of the social rules governing a person.

This blog will try to, at least, outline those rules and hopefully it will also help both locals and visitors to understand eachother.

About this section

The manual of a good porteño, a manual of behaviour, is a practical book of instructions that will guide visitors of Buenos Aires in how to understand subtelties of porteños courtship rituals and how to proceed.

It is a humble contribution to reduce the cultural gap, many misunderstandings and especially heartbreaks.

WHEN IN BUENOS AIRES… -part 5-

… speak as the porteños speak

FALSE COGNATES (top 10)

1- Embarrased > avergonzado  /   Embarazada > Pregnant

2- Excited > emocionado  /  Excitado > excited (sex.)

3- Large > grande  /  Largo > long

4- Success > éxito  /  suceso > even

5- To move (residence) > mudarse  /  moverse > to change position

6- To realize > darse cuenta de  /  realizar > to make or to do

7- Actually > en realidad  /  actualmente > currently

8- Soportar > to tolerate  /  to support > apoyar

9- Contento > happy  /  content > conforme

10- Egoísta > selfish  /  egotistical > egotista o egocéntrico

THOSE LOGICAL BUT FALSE RULES

In contrast to what many people think, teaching your own language as a  second language is not easy. Language is present in people´s lives in such a pervasive way that they frequently conclude that it works in an obvious way. Rules are logical and their exceptions are consequently logical too.

If you have worked as a language teacher you have probably noticed that things are not that obvious for your students and, more than once, they surely have asked questions you did not have answers to. If you haven´t done the experiment, well, you will have to trust me: language affairs are neither obvious nor simple.

Learning a language as you did when you were a child will never happen again. For this reason, we have grammar to try to bridge the gap between you and your chosen language.

However, grammar is logical to a fault, since it is always an abstraction of what really happens when people speak.

One of the most common mistakes is to use some simple and even logical rules that are useful to explain a few clear examples but exclude many others. Being simple makes these rules easy to remember and hard to change for more appropriate ones. Therefore, lots of mistakes fossilize in the mind of the students and it becomes a very complicated problem to correct.

The 3 most common examples of these logical but false rules:

1- Ser is used for permanent states and estar for temporary states. This rule does not explain why we say: Soy estudiante, está muerto, la fiesta es en mi casa, and many others.

2- Imperfecto is used for descriptions and Preterite, for one-time actions. The fallacious idea that Imperfecto is for longer periods than Preterite underlies this claim. Exceptions for this rule are: Juan no fue muy simpático ayer cuando hablamos; ayer te llamé todo el día, durante mi adolescencia salí muchísimo, etc.

3- It is impossible to list all the exceptions for the following rule: Subjunctive is used to express doubt, wishes or irreality.

Although it is true that as teacher, one cannot show grammar in all its complexity, with all its nuances at once, what we can do is dose out the knowledge throughout the course without instilling in the student the belief that things are simpler than they are. A language is a complex entity and one needs time to grasp it all.

Moral of the story: Don´t trust rules that seem to explain everything and… be patient.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IN BA

If you have not read the introduction of the book “Che, boludo” yet, let me quote for you an excerpt:

“Argentines love to talk. They comunicate directly, openly and often loudly. In Argentina, there’s no taboo in the use of foul language. A respectable old woman will swear like a sailor and no one bats an eye. Fools are not suffered lightly and anyone behaving in a pretentious or obnoxious manner will be sharply reprimended, sometimes with just a simple gesture of the hands. Political correctness does not exist on Argentina because it would only impede getting your point across. (…) It is evident when Argentines communicate with one another that their freedom of speech is real.”

Well… Sounds great, doesn´t it? And it is even plausible at first sight. However… I think it might be a little bit too much. If porteños were like this man describes, things here would be much better than they actually are.

Is that true that political correctness does not exist?

I do think that getting your point across is important in Argentine speech. There is no problem in calling things by its name; avoiding this is making it shameful. It feels like someone trying not to say a bad word.

We do often use the imperative form instead of other softer choices like the conditional tense, etc.

It is also true that we are seldom formal, neither in speech nor behavior. In Buenos Aires, “usted” form is also used with old people, and not always to be polite. We kiss more and more, even in an work interview.

Nevertheless, this does not necessarily mean that there is no political correctness. I think political correctness in Buenos Aires is never a matter of  vocabulary or grammar.

I always remember a story told to me by an ex-student. She was at a disco and she had asked a man to take a picture of her and her friends. At some moment, he let her camera fall, and she said (trying to sound understanding) “Eh, boludo!” She could not understand why he got angry.

Yes, “boludo” does have a lot of meanings but the whole issue is about how you pronouce it.

So, in Buenos Aires, you can be extremely polite using “bad words” or very insulting just using a common one, even a “good” one, because what we perceive afterwards is the intention.

As you see, things are not as perfect as they might seem ¡Ojo!

WHEN IN BUENOS AIRES… -part 4-

… speak as the porteños speak

TRANSPORT

Bondi: n. Bus (also colectivo).

Tacho: n. Taxi.

Tachero: n. Taxi driver.

Subte: n. Underground.

A pie: On foot. Exp.: En dodge /en dosh/ On foot, because of its similarity to “en dos” –> en dos pies.

Citraca: n. Citroen esp. VW beatle.

Fitito: n. Fiat 600.