“Disculpe, ¿cuánto cuesta esa estufa?”

“Esa estufa cuesta 1500 dólares.”

“¡1500 dólares!, pero, eso es una estafa!”

“No, no, es una estufa.”

It happened that one day a man decided to buy a new stove. Arriving at the store he asked the salesman:

“Excuse me. How much does that stove cost?”

“That stove costs $1500 dollars.”

“$1500 dollars! But that’s an estafa!”

“No. No. That’s a stove.”

Estafar is a verb that means to swindle or to defraud.

Thanks to www.buenos-chistes.com for the wording on the joke.

Fortunately I did not have to learn ataúd for any serious reason, but an ataúd played heavily in a joke I read today.

I also saw a couple of other phrases that mean a casket. But, I think they would probably be less formal. Pijama de madera and el sobretodo de madera (wooden pijamas and wooden overcoat).

But that is not what is being referred to when a Mexican talks about a tumbaburros. They are referring to large reference books and particularly the Real Academia Española dictionary. The idea that it is big enough to be used as one of these types of bumpers. Or just hitting a donkey with this dictionary would be enough to knock him over.

I already knew this word, but what got me to thinking about it was when walking through a mall yesterday I saw a restaurant called El Tumbaburros. Their tag line was “La Real Academia del Taco.”

El problema es masculino. La solución es feminina.

The problem is masculine. The solution is feminine.

It can also be used idiomatically to mean stick one’s nose into something: meter el hocico en algo. Or to fall on one’s face: caer de hocicos.

The reason the trip to the eye doctor reminded me of this word is because he used it today…properly. Lagañas are what people in polite company call “sleep in the eyes” and what the rest of us call “eye boogers.”

My first encounter with the word was when I was walking down the street and decided to engage an old shopkeeper in conversation. We sat outside his shop drinking a Coke as he told me the story of the way the city has grown. He said that he could remember where we were sitting was all monte back in the good old days. He said they came and cleaned out the monte and used the rocks from the area to build the houses. Wanting to clarify I asked him if they blasted the monte to get the rocks. He said there was some blasting, but mostly they just carried the rocks off from where there had been monte.

It was several months before I finally understood my conversation with the shopkeeper. I thought he was referring to a mountain when he meant brush and weeds. I even told other people that the reason it was so flat in this area is because the old man told me that they blasted the mountains to build the houses. How embarrassing!

It has been argued that in English there is a lack of understanding of the proper usage of the words come and go (as well as bring and take).

It is, by the way, grammatically wrong to say “coming” when you mean that you are going to the door, yet that is what we say. You cannot be in the living room and come to the front door, at least, not from the speaker’s perspective. You can only go to the front door. Alas, we still say “coming” when we mean we are going to the front door.

In Spanish though, you say that you go to answer the door.

When we were in language school we rented a guest house behind a family. It took me a while to understand that when the lady yelled “¡voy!” when I knocked on her door that she was telling me she was going to the door. I thought she was telling me to leave (vete or váyase). I always just stood there and acted like I either did not hear her or did not understand her. Eventually she came to the door and I could ask her my questions.

Mercy is misericordia. Grace is gracia. The problem came when I wrote the adjectives of those words. Misericordia becomes misericordioso. Logically gracia is gracioso. Even my dictionary agreed with that. One of the adults in the class started laughing at my paper. She had a good laugh at my ignorant mistake.

Whereas gracious can be translated gracioso, that is not the primary meaning of the word. The primary meaning is funny, jester, witty, facetious or clown. In essence I had written on my paper “God is merciful and God is funny.”

Before everyone got out that night, we were able to clear up the confusion and I learned the word bondadoso is a better choice for gracious.