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Vocabulary this week to help you learn Spanish:

a veces – sometimes
algo muy interesante – something very interesting
alguien – someone
amigo – friend
amistades – friendships
años – years
cienes – hundreds
cortés – courteous
crece – grows
cuando – when
cultura – culture
cultura diferente – different culture
diferencia – difference
disfruto – I enjoy
español – Spanish
esta parte – this part
esta semana – this week
esto representa – this represents
familiarizado – familiar
familias – families
gente – people
hogares – homes
la semana pasada – last week
mandarme saludos – to send me greetings (say hi to me)
muchas veces – many times
nuevo idioma – new language
padres – parents
palabras – words
puerta – door
un aspecto – an aspect
unos meses después – a few months later

Esta semana we are going to talk about un aspecto of the Latin cultura that I disfruto and admire.

I first became familiarizado with esta parte of the cultura cuando I was visiting familias with a native Spanish amigo in Latin America. When we visited hogares where we realized that the padres weren’t home at the time, and children had opened the puerta, before departing, my native amigo would usually say what sounded like, “Salud a tu mami [maw-mee]” or “Salud a tu papi [paw-pea]“. This phrase means “Health to your mom”, or “Health to your dad”. I thought this was algo muy interesante to say but remembered that I was in a cultura diferente where gente must go around wishing each other good “health” all the time.

I laughed at myself unos meses después, cuando I finally realized that he was saying “Saluda a tu mami” rather than “Salud a tu mami”. There is a slight diferencia in spelling but a big diferencia in meaning between these two palabras. “Salud” means “health” and “Saluda a tu mami” means “Say hello to your mom”.

Esto representa one of the things that the Latin gente do that I really admire. They are a very polite and cortés people and seem to be a little more formal than Americans are. In Latin America if you tell alguien to say “hi” to someone else, they will usually tell that person hi. Not only that, muchas veces they will even go out of their way to do it. There were cienes of times when I heard alguien say to someone else “Say hi to Juan” or “Maria”, and then later I heard them go out of their way to tell that person hi for them.

In the United States, my experience has usually been that if alguien tells you to say “hi” to someone else, a veces it gets back to them and a veces it doesn’t; usually gente do not go out of their way to say “hi” to someone else like they do in Latin America.

La semana pasada I wrote about some Latin amigos I hadn’t seen for a few años who recently came to visit me in the United States. The first thing they did, after telling me I was “gordo”, was to “mandarme saludos” from all of the gente who knew they were coming to the United States and wanted to say “hi” to me. They said, “Fernando te manda saludos”, etc…

Moral of the historia: When learning a nuevo idioma, a veces you hear palabras that you think mean one thing, and you later find out that they mean something entirely diferente. This happened to me muchas veces while learning and becoming fluent in español.

Also, I am very impressed with how polite gente are with each other in the Latin cultura. Amistades mean a lot to them and if you ever tell alguien to say “hi” to someone else, you can almost certainly guarantee that it will happen.

Sneak peek at next week: ¡Con Permiso! How to politely leave a social situation

¡Nos vemos! (We’ll see you!)
David S. Clark — President / Director
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