Miscellaneous Spanish-Language stuff

Here are some random thoughts on stuff I've been learning about Spanish since the last miscellaneous post.

• "Chevere" means "cool, awesome".  It's the cool word to use here.  I tell someone I went whale watching, and they say, "¡Que chevere!"  (I just realized I said that in the last post, too.  Oh well, it's still a fun word to say).

1. One time I was waiting for a bus, and it took much, much longer than I expected.  In general, the longest I've had to wait has been about 20 minutes, but on this particular day, it was nearly an hour. A group of men came to do some repairs on the bus stop structure, and I told them I was worried that maybe for some reason the bus had actually stopped running, or maybe changed routes.  They talked among themselves, and then explained to me I should keep waiting; the bus was delayed because of a "tranque".  I wasn't sure what that word meant: was it a terrorist attack? A crash? Since then, I've become very, very familiar with that word:  "tranque" = "traffic jam".  It's a very common occurrance here.
   
   
2. In the U.S., when we hear someone sneeze, we say "bless you", even if we don't know the person.  The Spanish equivalent is saying "salud".  But in addition, in Panama, if you see someone eating (even someone you don't know), you say "buen provecho".  

• The cute way of saying "please" (maybe like our "pretty please") shortens "por favor" to "porfis".  A cute way of saying "yes" (maybe like our "yuppers") is "sipi".  

1. In Spanish, there's an extra verse to the birthday song.  The first verse is like ours:

Feliz Cumpleaños a ti,

Feliz Cumpleaños a ti,

Feliz Cumpleaños [su nombre],

Feliz Cumpleaños a ti.

De la vela la luz,

Solo anhela decir

que lo sigues cumpliendo

muchos años feliz.  

I now know a joke that works in Spanish, but not so much in English.

Q:  ¿Como se llama el marido de la ballena? (What do you call the husband of a whale?)

A:  ¡Un autobus! (a bus!)

Porque un autobus? (Why a bus?)

A:  ¡Porque el autobus siempre va lleno!  (Because a bus always goes around full).  

[It's funny because it's a pun: 'va lleno' sounds like a masculine version of 'ballena'.]

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In the U.S., many people who have to learn a new language in school choose Spanish, because we tend to believe it's one of the easiest languages to learn.  So it's funny to hear how many people here in Panama tell me earnestly that Spanish is a really hard language to learn.  I hear that comment all the time.  

I will say that conjugating verbs -- which I thought I was pretty good at -- trips me up way more than I would have believed in advance, that getting the genders of the nouns right is another hazard I constantly face.  And the accents are tricky.

Another U.S. scholar and I were commiserating about our difficulty understanding spoken Spanish in Panama.  Our pet theory is that it's not the speed of the speech (although of course, that's a factor), but the fact that people here are so soft spoken.  I've been surprised at the number of people who turn their heads away from me as they talk, who cover their mouth with their hands as they talk, and who speak so softly I can't hear them (sometimes, doing several of those at once).  That sure makes it a lot harder to understand!