Zasca!

Coming to Spain I was fairly confident in my language skills, but was still apprehensive about being completely immersed in a foreign language. Most of my Spanish teachers throughout the years and my Spanish-speaking coworkers were from Latin America and thus have an accent and speaking style very different than that of Spain. I would say it took me about a week to get comfortable with the Spanish accent and to fully understand what my professors were saying, since they only talk to us in Spanish. Part of our Spanish language class teaches us about culture and local traditions, and in this class we actually got to learn some of the Spanish/ local slang so we would understand it when we heard it. This was helpful as it explained some common phrases that are misinterpreted, and one I actually had to use this past week. One way you can say you are sick is “estoy enferma”, which means just “I am sick” in general. If you want to say I have a cold, we learned it is actually “Estoy constipada”. Ofcourse, “constipada” is a false cognate as in it looks like a work in English but does not mean the same thing! It means you have a cold and thus are congested, where the English “constipated” means you are congested… in other ways. Last week I came down with a cold and needed to go to the pharmacy for some medication, and wanted to tell the pharmacist what I was experiencing (the pharmacists are so helpful here, it was like a doctor’s visit!) Before I went I asked my professor specifically if “estoy constipada” was correct and I wasn’t about to embarrass myself immensely at the store. I went to the pharmacy and confidently explained my condition and was given the cold medicine that I needed. I assume this amusing false cognate would prove most embarrassing if a Spanish speaker was translating it to English!

Although there have been a few new words that I have learned, there are three that have stood out to me. The first is “canguro”, which means babysitter. Since I often babysit for families at home I was amused by this word since it is so similar to a “kangaroo” that carries its baby in a pouch, like the babysitter does in a stroller! The second phrase is “estoy de mala leche”, which literally translated means “I am of sour milk”, but conversationally it means I’m in a bad mood or having a bad day. I like this figurative phrase and it’s literal translation matches it’s meaning. Finally, during our unit on slang words we learned the response “¡Zasca!”, which you would say after someone “burned” someone or made a joke. Now whenever someone in our group makes a joke or says something funny towards someone, you can always hear a member of the group yelling ¡Zasca!