One day I was out with a Cuban friend on a mission to rent a car. Though he was born in Cuba, he and his family have lived in the US since he was very young. While he was talking to the car rental man he asked a question about the timón. I had just […]

Efectivo is effective. As in, goes into effect, or it has power. Efectivo is also used to mean cash. This is a usage that I have heard a lot, but have not really understood. While trying to figure out its meaning, I ran across an example of how to use the word that makes sense. […]

Another sign seen on our trip was for deslave. When I went looking for a definition of this word, I was first routed to deslizarse which means to slide. Then I was sent to derrubiar, I have never encountered this word before so some digging was required. Derrubiar refers to a river that robs earth […]

On our recent trip we saw signs for the end of a zona de asentamiento. We had never seen the word asentamiento previously and because we are English speakers to us asent means to go up, so an area of going up or hills sounded feasible but there were no hills in this area. Well […]

The “at” symbol (@) for an email address is called arroba. It is also used as a measure of weight which varies between 11.5 and 12.5 kg. depending on where it is used.

As an athlete I often hear people talk about alto rendimiento. I gathered an idea of what it meant by the way it is used. The meaning I extracted had to do with getting the most you can out of your abilities. Yesterday while browsing through the clothing section of Wal-Mart I saw a shirt […]

On our recent trip we went through many poblados, that is towns. You could also say ciudad or villa. All poblados had topes. Topes are speed bumps. In most towns people would stand in the street on the topes selling things. This was a help to let us know where the topes were and to […]