What's your favourite Spanish word?

[Marianopolita]

The Cervantes Institute is celebrating the Spanish language. Spoken in five continents and with over 450 million speakers, as a way to recognize such a wonderful parole, commonality and connection among so many people many head offices of the Institute are celebrating 'El día E'.

As per the Director of the Cervantes Institute in New York: "Se trata de celebrar algo importante, de recordar que tenemos un gran tesoro", le dijo a BBC Mundo Eduardo Lago, director del Insituto Cervantes de Nueva York.

The organizers of this event want to celebrate it every year on the Saturday closest to the summer solstice.

On the dedicated website that's paying tribute to the language of Cervantes, Spanish speakers from around the world were asked to crown their favourite word. The winning word was 'malevo' which is used in the Argentinean vernacular. According to the article it means:

"maleante o un hombre matón y pendenciero que vivía en los arrabales de Buenos Aires".

I have never heard this word or heard it used in this context. Being around Argentineans or in country would increase one's chances but in a general sense words and expressions in a language get around but I have never heard this one until now.

INTERESTING OPINION POLL AND COMMENTS (SEE ARTICLE)

What I like about this opinion poll is it reveals once again the diversity in Spanish. Words and expressions can be generic, regional, archaic, popular etc. their meaning is subject to usage by their speakers. Some of the readers make some valid points which include words that should be removed from the dictionary (the RAE). I like the last phrase of the article:

"La Real Academia observa los movimientos de la lengua entre los pueblos. Los dueños del idioma son la gente de la calle, las personas normales, ni siquiera las más cultas", dijo.

IMO, words identify people and there are words and expressions that are definitely associated with a nationality or nationalities. Spanish is not an exception. What I find fun, as I said before is discovering them on your own via interaction, observation, listening etc. to how a group of people speak. It also shows that a person is really in tune with the language in all its facets. Although we all do not speak the same way or at the same level there are commonalities. Many times I identify a group of Spanish speakers simply by the usage of words, phrases, intonation and even the way they express themselves grammatically. I have also observed that many people can't do this.

Here is the link to the article and some of the comments are really interesting to read:

BBC Mundo - Portada

(See article titled: 'No sea 'malevo', hable español'. When I link it directly it does not open)

Favourite words or expressions

What is your favourite Spanish word or expression? (no vulgarities please as they usually steer the thread in the wrong direction)

(Hopefully people will show their diversity and not just be limited to the DR .....Spanish-speakers from the DR only represent approx 5% of total Spanish-speaking population).



-Marianopolita


... I was very reluctant to start yet another thread, I sure have enough but I thought it would be a good way to revive this very inactive forum.

[bachata]

My exwife use this word all time, she say "pero que malevo" when some body is trying to do some thing bad.

JJ

[FireGuy]

I love the way chinola both tastes and rolls off the tongue; as a word.

Gregg

[Marianopolita]

I didn't think I would have to do this so early in the thread.

Just to clarify I am familiar with word 'malevo' but I was referring to its colloquial context.

malevo, va
adj. y s. amer. Delincuente, malhechor, matón: un par de malevos lo amenazaron de muerte.

Look at the meaning provided in the dictionary. It has a complete colloquial connotation which coincides with the colloquial meaning in the article specifically 'hombre matón'.


-Marianopolita

[Norma Rosa]

I have been looking at the computer screen for over 30 minutes unable to come up with my favorite Spanish word. Maybe it is easier for those learning Spanish as a second language. I might have a favorite proper noun, but that's it. This is a very difficult thing to do, but I will continue thinking about it.

[AnnaC]

Entrégate!

[jrhartley]

ñoñeria coz its got two ñs in it

[angie12]

my favorite Spanish word is:
"Ñandú"

[À bientôt]

Originally Posted by Marianopolita

I didn't think I would have to do this so early in the thread.

Just to clarify I am familiar with word 'malevo' but I was referring to its colloquial context.

malevo, va
adj. y s. amer. Delincuente, malhechor, matón: un par de malevos lo amenazaron de muerte.

Look at the meaning provided in the dictionary. It has a complete colloquial connotation which coincides with the colloquial meaning in the article specifically 'hombre matón'.


-Marianopolita

"La camisa negra"

Por beber del veneno malevo de tu amor
yo quedé moribundo y lleno de dolor

How 'bout sobacos y verijas, did they make the list?

[Marianopolita]

Although there has not been many responses in this forum yet, the responses from the posters on BBC Mundo certainly show the diversity of human nature and in many ways I think the word choices reflect some keys aspects about Spanish in each country especially Latin America. The comments reveal nationalism, some rivalry, empathy, colloquial preferences, linguistic pride and once again the 'one language many variations ideology' which is very true about Spanish. The language is extremely diverse but unified by one grammar and this is so key although there are notable speech varieties in the language especially in LA. One poster on BBC Mundo even said: 'in Latin America we speak castelllano with regional variations whereas in Spain they speak español'. Now not to get off topic it may raise the discussion of what’s the difference between castellano vs. español. However, when I read the comment I thought about it and there’s a lot of truth to what was said after reading the explanation given by the individual.

I have not selected a favourite word because I don’t know if I can narrow my choice down to one. Some words in Spanish draw my attention for phonetic reasons; many of indigenous origin are interesting because they stand out, some words are beautiful because of their meaning and various connotations, some are beautiful because they are considered archaic etc. These are just a few of the various reasons that come to mind when I think about what my possible favourite word(s) in Spanish may be.

What I found interesting are comments by a few Dominican and Puerto Rican posters. There was one vote for the word chin with the Dominican meaning of 'a little bit' for e.g. un chin de café. The word chin is registered the RAE but the Dominican connotation is not included. One PR poster voted for the word china with the meaning of naranja and continued on to say the RAE would probably never include many Puerto Rican words (puertorriqueñismos) which is the nationalism I referred to above. The word chévere and its supposed origins drew a lot of votes and the winning word malevo is to the disliking of many who believe it’s too colloquial to win a contest such as this one. Here is one poster who IMO, gave a good explanation why malevo should not have been the winning word:

Me sorprende que se haya elegido la palabra "malevo", que si bien fue utilizada en ciertos ambientes, en otra época, tal como surge en textos de Borges entre otros; inclusive existió una telenovela llamada "Malevo", como así también el Malevo Ferreyra, no es una palabra que se utilice en Argentina en la actualidad y por lo tanto no todos, salvo gente de cierta edad, conoce su significado. Quizas en otros paises que se habla el español se siga utilizando, no lo se, por eso me sorprendió.

Norma Capital Federal-Argentina

I also noted people tend to like expressions and possibly in our daily speech we don’t realize how much we use them. As mentioned before expressions reveal much about a speaker’s origin. It’s definitely an identifier and the same concept has been revealed in people’s comments. Here are a few:

1/ chilero (Guatemala) –

que significa algo extremadamente bonito o llamativo.

2/ altiro (Chile)-

que se refiere a realizar algo de inmediato, rapido tambien como para ir a un lugar. ej. voy altiro de compras

3/ churo (Bolivia)-

que significa algo bueno, divertido, (cool en ingles). Muy utilizado en la ciudad de la que provengo, Tarija Bolivia. En donde la gente se especializa en ser "chura".

Surprisingly, there has been no mention of the expression che which singularly identifies Argentineans and is commonly known by other Latinos.

If you don’t read the article and some of the comments you will not get a good feel for the discussion and maybe it would instigate some thoughts about language that you may have. I know some are limited by not being able to read in Spanish but those who can should at least read the article and not only rely on my commentary.

Originally Posted by angie12

my favorite Spanish word is:
"Ñandú"

I had to look up ñandú- (Del guar. ñandú, avestruz y araña).

RAE:

1. m. Ave corredora americana, muy veloz, que habita las grandes llanuras, se alimenta de plantas e insectos y anida, como el avestruz, en depresiones del terreno.

Originally Posted by À bientôt

...
How 'bout sobacos y verijas, did they make the list?

No, but let’s not go there...



-Marianopolita