The local police were handing out road safety tips the other day. I don’t remember all the wording, but it mentioned something about somnolencia. I knew, of course, that insomnia (in English) is the inability to sleep, so I figured that somnolencia was drowsiness, or sleepiness. From my study it seems that somnolencia is the [...]

A subdivision of houses is called a fraccionamiento in Mexico. This is used when a section of town is a “planned” section. Usually houses that are similar or identical in design and probably built by the same company–a housing development. In Argentina they call this a loteo. The word fraccionaminento comes from fraccionar which means [...]

Today we went to the playa, the beach, where there was arena. On the beach we wore our playeras, short sleeve shirts or t-shirts.

I had to go to the bicycle store today to get a patch for my tire. I asked the guy for a parche, unsure of the word. He looked at me as if to say “what else would you call it.” I just was not sure if parche was a patch. It is. That is [...]

Tonight at church the preacher read a verse that contained the word engendrar. I knew it meant to give birth to, to father, or to breed, but I suspected that it had a deeper meaning. It seems to mean the impetus or the starting point of something. Without talking about human or animal reproduction it [...]

I first learned that chalk was tiza when I was in Peru. Here in Mexico we use the word gis to mean chalk. Both of these refer to the stick of chalk you write with. If you are talking about the substance that gis or tiza is made from, it is called creta or caliza. [...]