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My postillion has been struck by lightning...

22:18 / 08.05.03

As I struggle with a language that everyone tells me should be no problem, (my Italian is almost fluent, I'm trying Spanish) I have come to realise the awful truth. Phrase books are shite. Not only that, they lead you down a path of tourist misery where the only things you can say have to do with being able to order fish and chips in an "exotic" locale.

And they have nothing to do with my lifestyle. How do you ask for drugs? without getting burnt? Its not the sort of thing that is particularly easy to find in a dictionary. So many things I don't know how to say. Domme? Sub? CBT?

So help me out. I want to know how to say things in Spanish. But feel free to share your phrasebook hell, too.

22:43 / 08.05.03

My one, not-very-hellish experience was at the over-confident end of a holiday in Sicily. I asked at a restaurant for a table for one and the waiter gave me the look of a man completely puzzled by a random request for a small piece of furniture.

If no linguist replies, take a look at the phrases at the back of Lonely Planet guides. From memory they should give you some of what you want.

00:07 / 09.05.03

spanish
english

tu pene es tan pequeNo que si te follaras a un ratón, no lo notaría.

your penis is so small that if you fucked a mouse it wouldnt notice.

de dónde yo vengo, el incesto no está bien visto.

where i come from incest is not encouraged.

me gustaría comprarte los hijos. ?cuánto vale el niNo?

i would like to buy your children. how much for the boy?

puta

whore

gilipollas

wanker

i never bought drugs in spanish, sorry dude.

try waving rizlas and asking if they have heard of bob marley.

00:13 / 09.05.03

and depending on your preference, you may find jugar a los dos bandos, to swing both ways useful.

or how about dar candela por el culo, to take it up the arse?

have fun.

00:16 / 09.05.03

i forgot to say, in the first post, where there is a capital N out of plce, it is supposed to have an accent above it that my computer wont let me do.

pronounced like el niNo.

00:52 / 09.05.03

put on numlock, hold down [alt] and type 0241. You should get a ñ... no?

Lurid: The uni library has a few "streetwise Spanish" books. I'll grab one this weekend and see if it has anything worth repeating.

Phrasebooks are good if you in a situation where "Damn! I need to learn enough German to get to the train station and order food and etc. in 3 days!". To actually learn a language they're shite.

Right now I'm just reading Spanish Maxim and tranlating Shakira lyrics in order to try and learn Spanish by September. The only good thing about the Lonely Planet German Phrasebook is that "Haben sie ein gummi?" has become a common inside joke with my brother.

07:34 / 09.05.03

As far as I know "Codete" means "Fuck yourself", from the now made reflexive verb "coder",notice the "te" which would be the "yourself", combined with "puta", you can make a sentence "Codete Puta" or "Fuck yourself whore".

Apart from this my spanish is very patchy. "Callate" = "Shut up", and "Sientate" = "Sit down".

You could try "Quiero drogas ahora" for "I want drugs now", maybe ask someone discreetly in a club I suppose. "Me gustan las drogas" = I like drugs.

I know this is all very very basic but it should help get the message across.

08:30 / 09.05.03

put on numlock, hold down [alt] and type 0241. You should get a ñ... no?

or 164. if you want the capital it's 165.

08:43 / 09.05.03

I don't know how much use this will be to you (you don't smoke, do you?) but a lighter is, IIRC, un incendiario. So to ask whether someone has a light (to strike up a conversation or something) you might ask, tienes un incendiario? (with the upside down question mark at the beginning, obviously. I bet there's a more colloquial way of saying it, but...

09:07 / 09.05.03

Asking for drugs in Spain - I believe cannabis resin is sometimes called chocolada but then again isn't marijuana a Spanish word? I would be interested in knowing how the phrase esta es buena mierda, hombre goes down in Spain.

Smoking related language blunders. In French an ashtray is un cendrier and a wild boar is un sanglier. Needless to say, Mrs H.I.R once asked a waiter in France for a wild boar as he brought us the coffee.

10:08 / 09.05.03

What kind of dictionary do you have Lurid? When I was learning some Italian I had one of those big Collins ones which was half English - Italian and half Italian - English. It had lots of colloquial stuff, with examples. It had all these entries for different uses of fuck, fuckwit, etc., and I shit you not, one of the examples was something like "get your fucking hands off my stereo." Finally someting useful!

13:49 / 09.05.03

i always thought marijuana was a creation of the WarOnDrugs, invented to make the drug sund more mexican, and thereore more easily demonised in early 20thC america.

i am willing to be educated...

13:57 / 09.05.03

May I suggest the fantastic Wicked Spanish?

14:55 / 09.05.03

Seconding the Lonely Planet recommendation.

The term "marijuana" was widely popularized by the Heart newspaper group - but I think it was pre-existing Mexican slang. (They also idiomatically refer to salvia divinorum as "Ska Pastora" - the something shepherdess).

Most of the little Spanish I know would probably be useless in Spain. Idioms change from country to country. Mordant started a similar thread on Spanish some time ago. I remember rambling about insults... most are family- and sex-based rather than scatological. Hijo de puta (son of a whore) or madre de putas (mother of whores) or simply !Puteria! (Whoredom!) are pretty good exclamations that I think translate from country to country.

If it's drugs you're after, you might find this Spanish page useful. Follow some of the links around for terminology. It's gonna be all *proper*, but it's something. Now to figure out what "hachis" and "cucumelo" are.

Oh, hachis is hash (duh.)
And cucumelo seems to grow on cowshit. So three guesses what that one is.