Spanish question

[Sethomas]

There seems to be more people than usual who speak Spanish as a first language now, or maybe I'm just now noticing it. I dunno.

I took it in high school because it was one of only two languages offered, and I wanted to show off my interest in languages to colleges so I took both (the other was French). I'm not good at either, nor any other language I've studied.

I never took Spanish seriously because even though it's extremely useful in American job markets, it's not all that important for my dream job compared to other languages. For Religious Studies research, the best application I've found is that it helps me read Ladino pretty well.

Anyways, I've never been good at it but lately I've been getting much better at taking what little I know and speaking it intelligibly since we always get Mexicans at work and I'm the only person there who can form a sentence in Spanish. Practice really helps, even if my vocab doesn't grow.

I started wondering about an experience I had in a conversation about learning languages with a couple of people. The main contributer to the conversation was from Colombia, so he was native in Spanish yet happened to speak English better than most Americans. He spent a long time making fun of himself from his time when he first studied in America to justify the next phase when he mocked English-speakers learning Spanish*.

He kept speaking Spanish very slowly in a fake American accent (even though there were more Swedes there than Americans), using all the unnecessary pronouns, and he came to the verb "salir". He said, like, "Me goooo-sta salir! Yoh kee-ehr-oh salir esta noche! Yo salgo con mis ah-mee-gohs! Yo salgo con TODOS mis ah-meee-gos!"

So, I didn't really get the joke but I figured that salir had some sexual meaning I was never told. I can't find anything that direct online to explain it.

I just wanted to ask because I had a mental image of some freshman Spanish student asking, "Quieres salir con yo?" (instead of conmigo, I wasn't taught why I shouldn't say that until long too late). The idea of going up to someone and asking "wanna be fuckbuddies, you cunt?" is excellent, though.

*This kind of paints him as a dick, but he wasn't, he was a cool guy. His best story about himself was when he was giving a speech when he had to talk about his home country to a large audience. He quoted himself in a thick Colombian accent that he didn't usually have when speaking English, saying, "When people think of Colombia, they think of drugs. This is bad. Colombia has many things other than drugs. People do not know that Colombia is a great place to find bitches. Colombia has some of the most beautiful bitches in the world. Colombia is the only country in South America that has bitches on both the Atlantic and bitches on the Pacific."

(If it's not obvious, he was trying to say "beaches".)

[darkvare]

mmm... salir as a sexual inuendo never heard of it. the fact that he was saying amigos and not amigas means he probably wasn't talking about sex but just triying to have a good time like we do here when we talk to gringos

[Sethomas]

Well, I get what you're saying and you're right, but the idea was that he was pretending to be a foreigner speaking Spanish unaware of how natives would interpret him.

Since Spanish has huge amounts of regional variants, my guess was that it might be something that only meant something sexual in certain areas or maybe one city or something. Like I said, he was Colombian but this conversation took place in Madrid.

I forget what you would call it, but the tense where you say things like "He venido, has venido, ha venido..." was something I never learned in class but just kind of picked up. When I had a girlfriend who spoke Spanish better than me, she'd yell at me every time I'd use that tense because I was wrong about what situations use it. Months later she apologized when she learned that I was using it properly, but only for Spanish spoken in like a 40-mile radius of Madrid.

One thing that pisses me off about the language is that they can't agree what to call it.

What I've gathered so far:
In Spain, "español" is usually used as word for a nationality but sometimes is used for the language, and if they want to be specific about Spanish spoken in most of Spain they call it "castellano". If you're in Northeastern Spain, you can get away with calling Catalan "español" in many cases, but even though they'll gladly speak Castillian with you you'll be summarily executed if you call their language "castellano". In Argentina, the language is always called "castellano" and "español" always refers to Spain. In Mexico, "español" is the word for the language and if you say "castellano" they'll have no idea what you're talking about. Everywhere else, the difference varies in random patterns that change every fifty miles and if you get it wrong you'll be imprisoned for at least four months, by which time the local rules will have changed.

[darkvare]

actually catalan is completly different lenguage is like a mix of spanish and an old lenguage they used to speak and it is only mainly talked in a part of spain known as catalan country wich is between spain and france

[Sethomas]

I learned that the hard way.

[ElPila666]

Originally Posted by Sethomas

He kept speaking Spanish very slowly in a fake American accent (even though there were more Swedes there than Americans), using all the unnecessary pronouns, and he came to the verb "salir". He said, like, "Me goooo-sta salir! Yoh kee-ehr-oh salir esta noche! Yo salgo con mis ah-mee-gohs! Yo salgo con TODOS mis ah-meee-gos!"

What he said was "Me gusta salir! Yo quiero salir esta noche! Yo salgo con mis amigos! Yo salgo con TODOS mis amigos!"

That means "I like to go out! I wanna go out tonight! I go out with my friends! I go out with ALL of them!"

Now by "ALL of them" thats reminds me the time when we were buying cocaine, my friends and i, we called the dealer by cell phone, and he wanted to us to spoke him in codes, so when we bought him $30 pesos of cocaine we said "Hi gordo can you came here with 3 amigos", then he said that we should quit calling it "amigos" and should started to called it "amigas" instead, cause we sound like faggots asking for some "amigos".
Speaking of that in spanish even the things have sexual gender, by example: the chair is a she (la silla), the car is a he (el auto), the ice-cream is a he (el helado) and so... that's maybe confusing for you guys cause you have the "It" for things, am i right?

[liquidstatik]

then he said that we should quit calling it "amigos" and should started to called it "amigas" instead, cause we sound like faggots asking for some "amigos".

oh man, dealers are the same everywhere

[DuFresne]

Is it just me, or was ElPila's translation surprisingly coherent for him?

[ElPila666]

I have put myself together for a week, i'm going for the second one

[Fat_Hippo]

He hasn't smoked a blunt in days.

[Pandajuice]

I took Spanish in high school as well for 3 semesters, and I loved it. I got a lot of use and practice out of it, being in California, and found it fun that I could communicate with the illegals at work when no one else could, or cared to. Believe it or not, illegal Mexicans are very interesting people when you actually take the time to converse with them.

Sethomas, after studying Spanish in high school, I took a few semesters of Latin in college and found that previously studying a romantic language really helped in learning the base language, and vise versa. It also greatly expands the list of cognates one can draw upon that makes learning vocabulary that much easier.
I'd imagine knowing Latin would help a lot in Religious Studies too, so check it out.

[Fat_Hippo]

I'm probably gonna take latin and have it for...4 more years, which will add up to a grand total of 7 years of latin, which will probably help me learn spanish. You can never learn too many languages, even if I do mostly suck at them.

[Pub Lover]

HaHa, Dudes Don't Know Seth.

[Hobo Renee]

"Hey Seth! Have you heard of this cool new language called Biblical Hebrew? You should check it out! Maybe it'll help you read the Bible and stuff."

[Pandajuice]

Yes unfortunately not all of us have the time to engage in the modernistic social irony and fallacy of intimately knowing people we've never met.

[Pub Lover]

HaHA, Dude Needs To Justify Himself.

[Hobo Renee]

Yes unfortunately not all of us have the time to engage in the modernistic social irony

Yet, you post on a forum with "mockery" in the title.

Shit, now I feel like I need to justify myself.

[MadballChibcha]

I´m feeling kind of embarrased in taking your spanish teacher as a fellow colombian. But it´s nice to see that he was at least trying to clean the name of our country.

[Sethomas]

Heh, the Colombian wasn't one of my teachers, he was just living in Spain with his American girlfriend who was enrolled in the same school as I was.

So, in Colombia, does "salir" have any hidden meanings that it doesn't have anywhere else? Or maybe in Spain? I WISH I KNEW.

My flatmate (who was in my class) was a cute Swedish girl with a British accent named Monika and one of my teachers there was a cute Spanish girl named Monica. Instead of posting it in the appropriate thread, I'll tell my past self here that I should have got them all together in a Monica-Seth-Monika sandwich because, really, how often does that chance come up. (of the few girlfriends I've had since age 10, two were named Jessica Miller. That is relevant.)

[MadballChibcha]

Nope, in Colombia "salir" does not have any hidden meaning whatsoever. Be careful if you say "tirar" (to throw) tho. Depending on the context, it means the same as "chingar".

[darkvare]

but tirar also means fuck in mexico the same as echarse un palito fajar y tortear so if anyone ask you, quieres "insert previuosly mention word here" ? and you don't wanna have sex say no kids