anyone who actually paid attention: the Barbie movie is about how both matriarchy and patriarchy are damaging to people and that no one will be happy as long as people feel unequal and you shouldn’t base your happiness on once person and you shouldn’t force your feelings on another person, especially if they’ve told you that they’re not interested in you. In this essay I will
If I can recommend you do 1 low-effort thing for the love of God it is this:
Keep 5 cards in your pocket. One will say “yes”, the second will say “no.”
If you lose your voice, or lose speech, or want to make a dramatic embellishment at the right time, it is an elegant and efficient solution that is right there at hand.
But what if people question you from there? “Why do you have that card? Why would you do this? How long have you had that in your pocket?” For this, or whatever else they say, the third card: “I don’t have a card for that.”
“What the fuck,” they ask. They laugh. They are bemused. You bring the energy back down with the fourth card: “I have laryngitis. I’ve lost speech. My throat hurts”. Whatever you expect to occur.
The joke is over. Rule of threes. Now they are curious. They wonder about logistics. “How did you know I would say that? Is everyone so predictable?”
As a three-part bit, nobody ever sees the fifth card coming.
What I’ve Learned About Puerto Rican Spanish (so far)-Part 1 out of probably more
Some notes before we begin:
-I’ve been studying Spanish on a whole for 3 months. I’m not a native speaker, nor am I Puerto Rican. I will be running this post by my Puerto Rican boyfriend for accuracy’s sake and so I don’t throw around misinformation
-if you can’t tell by me saying “Puerto Rican boyfriend” up there, I’ll be giving this dialect and accent the praise it rightfully deserves as a diverse piece of this beautiful language but I might be a little bit biased 😂
This is the dialect and accent that I’m slowly trying to integrate into my studies naturally so I can eventually adopt it as my own.
Puerto Rico and its language is a prime example of the very thing my nerd brain loves to learn about instead of actually studying the language like I should: the ways that various influences can shape a language. Puerto Rico was one of the lucky ones that got colonized two whole times (fun fact: This Is Bad) and because of that it’s a fairly bilingual culture. Their Spanish is not only beautifully Latino and Caribbean, it’s also very English. Spanglish, if you will. Cursed by the Anglophones. But it’s really cool, admittedly.
Pronunciation
All of this to say that Puerto Rican Spanish doesn’t have all that “c (the)* and “z (theta)” stuff from Spain, for starters, but there’s some other interesting aspects to the speech.
-Puerto Ricans speak fast. Maybe I’m just getting that impression as an A1 beginner but it seems like it’s true.
-Lots of times the “R” sound is replaced with an “L” (“hablar”=“hablal”)
-Like many other dialects they “eat the S” (“buscar”=“bucal”)
-but they’re still hungry so they also eat whole halves of words (“Estás”=“‘Ta”)
-if there’s a “D” in the middle of some vowels or at the end of a word it gets dropped (“cansado”=“cana’o”, “verdad”=“velda’”
-There’s this beautiful rhythm to their speech. It sounds a bit like maybe they put more emphasis on the vowels and I’ve heard it described as almost sing-song, but it’s hard to describe. It’s incredibly unique.
-in some areas the “R” can turn into a hard “H” sound, although I personally haven’t heard this yet
Unique words and phrases, there are more than these but these are the ones I understand enough to feel like I can teach ok vamos
“¿Qué es la que hay?”-“How’s it going?” (Sounds like “¿Qué la que hay?”)
Though most other ways to extend the same greeting can be used, this is a great one to get Puerto Ricans‘ attention and make anyone else go “where did you learn that, what, I’m so confused”
“Corillo”-“gang/group of friends”
This is equivalent to how we use “gang” in English casually to mean our friends, I don’t believe it means a literal gang with gang activity.
“Janguear”-“to hang out” (sounds like “jangueal”)
This is a verb that sounds exactly like what it means, since it comes from English. I have suspicions that there are multiple ways to spell it but this is what I was taught.
“Birra”-“beer”
Self-explanatory. I like this one more than “cerveza” anyway.
“Parquear”-“to park” (sounds like “palqueal”)
Another self-explanatory one. It’s fun to say and makes me wish I could drive so I had an excuse to say it.
“Ahorita”-uhhhhh
I lied about only picking words I understand. I’ll get back to you on this but from what I can tell if “ahora” means “now” then “ahorita” means “a little bit from now”(???). But I really don’t know, it’s not really that. But it is. Remind me to take this section out, alright cool.
“Puñeta”-lit. “jack off”, but a general curse word
Don’t use this one. Don’t tell anyone I told you about it. Take this to your grave. I’m a good influence. I’m a good influence. I’m a
“Bochinche”-“gossip”
This means gossip but not the idle kind, more like the kind you really shouldn’t be throwing around without really meaning it (like what I’m not doing with the words on this list). Slander, I guess. Don’t do this it’s mean 😡
“Duro”-“skilled”
This is in most Spanish dialects and usually means “hard” or “durable”, but Puerto Ricans use it in another way: to say someone’s good at something. Mi español no es duro, por ejemplo.
“Brutal”-“great”
This isn’t like “brutal” in English, being a bad thing. It’s slang that’s saying that something’s really cool or great.
“Buscar” can also mean “to pick someone up (from something)” in Puerto Rico, so like if you were offering to drive your friend somewhere. And it still can sound like “bucal”
think that’s all I’ve got in me
I get most of my info from this subject from the YouTube channel Learn Spanish Faster. Specifically the videos on various Puerto Rican words and the accent, both with more information than I have here. Definitely worth checking out!
I asked my boyfriend if he had anything to say to anyone reading this who might be interested in learning more. This is what he had to say:
“hmmm. Puñeta is much more than a general curse word. It’s a way of life. we say it for excitement. we say it for anger. we say it for sadness. when something is extremely difficult: ‘esto está puñetero’”
He was very excited when I learned that word so it’s no surprise he would share this with you all. It’s a very versatile one he uses a lot and likes a lot (I like it too). Just please be responsible with it.
I’ll definitely make a part 2 once I learn more but this is a good place to leave it, I think.
Some of you might remember a couple of years ago when Scarlett Johansson sued Disney because she was making significantly less money for Black Widow than was guaranteed in her contract because so many more people watched it on streaming than in theaters, how there was a massive misinformation campaign from Disney that a ton of people on this website (and Twitter and other social media) bought into: that she was a greedy bitch who didn’t respect people who needed to stay at home during the pandemic (I believe the word “ableist” was thrown around with aplomb) as opposed to someone who just wanted to be paid what she was owed, what Disney had initially guaranteed her when they signed the contract, and whose issue obviously wasn’t with streaming itself but with how little streaming was allowed to get away with paying her and other actors.
Anyway we’re going to see a lot of that from studios now, especially now that actors have joined the strike and it’s easier to sell them as rich and greedy than writers, because of this cultural stereotype we have of all Hollywood actors as celebrities. Don’t fall for it. SAG-AFTRA represents people like Tom Cruise and ScarJo but it also represents the kind of people who played a Borg in two episodes of Star Trek: Voyager in 1997 or who had one line in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as an enthusiastic audience member. Most actors are not crazy wealthy, and in fact, if you’re a big TV fan (especially older TV and genre TV) that likely includes some actor names that you know, who played supporting roles in your fav shows, or who were even a star in something decades ago but haven’t done anything major since. The AFTRA side also represents people like radio broadcasters. But even beside that, all workers deserve to be fairly compensated for the work they do, and the threat of replacing them with AI, or real actors being required to sign contracts to allow their likenesses to be used by AI forever without paying them, is an existential threat to acting as a profession in general. The actors are in the right. The writers are in the right. The studios are in the wrong. The studios have exploited new technology to get away with horrifying labor practices for years and their feet need to be put to the fire. Circulate the articles about how poorly the Orange is the New Black cast was compensated for making one of the defining shows of the early streaming boom, and of the studios saying they want to force writers to starve and lose their homes. Don’t get distracted by propaganda aping progressive-sounding language about wealthy celebrities. Focus on the real enemy, the real greedy, rich assholes who care more about money than people and art: the studios.
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