Spanish snafus

Have you ever had an embarrassing language snafu? Well up until this past weekend I didn't think I had committed any but turns out all of my friends and I had been committing a rather big one regularly. We were all taught, as I'm sure you were if you've taken any Spanish that "Entiendes?" means "Do you understand?", and if you just go by the dictionary definition that is 100% true and perfectly correct. Now that we have that established lets move on with the story, one night Allison, Kenzie and I were out with some Spanish friends and feeling good about our Spanish, chatting up a storm when one of us, I don't remember who asked Lucas, "Entiendes?". His response was laughter, we of course were very confused because we didn't understand what we had said wrong, we had used the correct verb and conjugated it correctly. Once he calmed down a bit he explained to us that in this particular region of Spain to ask someone "Entiendes?" is to ask someone if they are gay. At first we just thought he was teasing us, but we asked Miguel what it meant and he agreed. Determined not to make the mistake again we asked what we should be saying instead, it turns out "Sabes?" which literally translates to "Do you know?" is more appropriate and will save us a lot of awkward moments when talking with Spaniards.

Another interesting language quirk I have encountered here in the general populations inability to pronounce "Jenny". They do just fine with "Jennifer", occasionally adding a 'Y' in front but that is to be expected, what baffles me is the utter failure when it comes to "Jenny", it consistently comes out as "Yani". After two and a half months (wow I've been here a long time!) of confusion and wondering, I finally broke down and asked Miguel if there is a reason for this. To my surprise, it wasn't just that the syllables are hard for the Spanish mouth to pronounce no, he told me in a very straightforward manner, that my name is vulgar. I was shocked by this and asked him to elaborate, he told me that Jenny is the "vulgar gypsy form" of Jennifer, so the Spaniards don't use it and don't like to say it. Just as a little but of background information, the gypsies have a really bad reputation in Spain, as the do in the rest of the world, and are the lowest of the low in society. The have a reputation for stealing and cheating and many of them are so poor they live in boxes and as Miguel also told me "go out in their pajamas", I'm not sure that they are doing this by choice but the Spaniards look down on them for it. Since this night I've been using Jennifer when I meet new people and I've been getting much more positive results.

Well I hope you enjoyed my stories about some of my language struggles here in Spain, I was at a loss about what to write about for this blog because I didn't do much today other than get some coffee with friends while we finalized the final details of our trip to Barcelona tomorrow, and pack. However, my mom suggested I share these so I did.

Anyways, I'll be taking a short hiatus from blogging because I won't have internet from Sunday-Wednesday because I'll be traveling but as soon as I return I promise to tell you all about Barcelona with lots of pictures! Try not to miss me too much. Hasta luego!