My little girl is a red head and as such she suffers from what many other redheads do, freckles. She is very fair skinned so her freckles really stand out. The other day a friend who we have known a while noticed her freckles and commented on them. The Mexicans who we know have freckles but because their skin tone is darker they are not as noticeable. I guess our friend had never seen such prominent freckles.
Anyway, the word for freckles is pecas.
When I first saw damnificados I was shocked to see it used in a newspaper headline. I immediately thought of our similar looking English word. Imagine my surprise when I looked up the word to find out it simply means victims. Particularly the newspaper was telling about victims of a hurricane.
Every use of the word I have seen happens to be in reference to a natural disaster. I am not sure if this is a requirement in the meaning of the word or not. I am curious if someone could leave a comment and let us know if that is true.
The verb gustar is most commonly associated with the word like. It would be used in most places that we use the word like in English. However, it is not a grammatical equivalent, which is why English speakers have such a hard time knowing how to use gustar. But if you think of gustar as being a functional equivalent of please (as in, that pleases me), you will be much better off.
The basic problem with thinking of like and gustar as equals is that they have a different perspective on the one doing the action.
In the phrase “I like peanut butter,” it is me who is doing the action of liking the peanut butter. But to say “the peanut butter pleases me” has the peanut butter doing the action to me.
The Spanish gustar is much more equivalent to please. You don’t say “yo gusto el chocolate” because that says “I please the chocolate.” You would instead say “me gusta el chocolate” or “the chocolate pleases me.”
When struggling with the usage of gustar, try to think of its equivalent as being the word please and you will have a grammatical equivalent.
At church the other day, I noticed that a couple of the verses we read started with the phrase por tanto. I couldn’t reason out the meaning to myself. I knew that tanto was much or a lot and the verses just did not make sense with this meaning.
One of the verses was:
Por tanto, id, y haced discÃpulos a todas las naciones, Mateo 28:19
After studying the phrase I found that por tanto means because of this or for this reason. The verse makes much more sense now.
Previously I had posted the word capacitar. Usually the person who is doing the capacitación is called an asesor. The word means an adviser, but when they are capacitando someone, they could be called a trainer.
I hear this word used more in one on one situations where one person is being trained for a specific job task. But I have also seen it used in group classes. I believe I have only heard it used when the subject is one of intellectual nature as opposed to physical. If the trainer is teaching something physical, particularly a sport, they are called an entrenador.
This last week there was a drug related assassination in town. This was carried out by sicarios, or hired assassins. The police arrived after being tipped off that something odd was going on. Unfortunately, they were not able to get there before the hit men had done their work. However, they did arrive before the sicarios could get away. They were arrested.
If the man had hired a guardaespalda, then he might have been better off. Bodyguards are hired to guard your back.
What disappears when you stand up? Regazo or lap.
I am sure that is one of those words they taught us in school. But I heard it this weekend and it was new for me. Now if I can just remember it when I need to use it. Fortunately, I have been living in a Spanish speaking country for more than 3 years. If it has not been necessary by now, I can probably get by without knowing this one.
