We are moving and will be storing our stuff at someone’s house. I mentioned that I needed to get something to lift the items off the floor in case of a hurricane. The man who will be watching our stuff told me I needed tarimas. Of course I was thinking a pallet. Tarima is a […]

While watching the Olympics the announcers talked about the accomplishment of one of the athletes. He used the word hazaña. It means a great or heroic deed, an achievement, a feat.

Your medio ambiente is your environment. This refers to your cultural, social or natural environment.

Sinsabor is a descriptive term for something that is without taste or pleasure. I presume it can be used to talk about food, but the usage I have heard has been when talking about the discomforts or displeasures of life. Troubles or problems that people struggle with.

The place to park your car is the estacionamiento. It is the noun for a parking lot or a parking space. The verb is reflexive and is estacionarse.
One of the worst “spanglish” words I have heard is parquear meaning to park. I suppose out of all the bad combinations of English and Spanish I have […]

Along with the word muelle being used to mean pier or jetty, the word malecón can also mean the same thing. But when I have heard malecón used it refers to a sea wall, or breakers at a beach.

When taking a trip on a horrible road we broke the muelles on our trailer. Those are the leaf springs that hold the trailer off the axle. Interestingly there were several shops which repaired muelles right through that section of highway.
Muelle is also a pier or a dock for boats.

I saw desincrustante in the store the other day on a bottle of facial cleanser. I thought it was pretty gross sounding, de-cruster. It is actually not that bad, desincrustante just means an exfoliant.

Escenario is a scene, as in a play. It can also be used to refer to the stage. It does not have to be used just in the context of a play though. Escenario is used like we would talk about a setting for some event.

Gestión can be thought of as gesture. Like our word gesture has many meanings, there are often better ways to translate gestión. It can mean to take steps as in taking steps to solve a problem. It can be negotiations as in they negotiated the terms of the deal. It can be a process as […]