WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

Re:WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreig... by Abraln on Tuesday August 25, 2015 @02:48PM (#10118692)

It's definitely very important to realize that Spanish-speaking countries, while nominally speaking the same language, are very different. Spain has an entire verb tense that is not in Mexican Spanish. And unconfirmed example I have heard is pico de gallo. In Mexican Spanish it means something that's not too dissimilar from salsa, yet in some parts of South America, pico means penis. I heard there was an issue with a Nintendo DS game for children that revolved around cooking that assumed they were all the same and had a recipe for pico de gallo!

Edit: grammar/spelling

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Re:WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreig... by iamcurious on Tuesday August 25, 2015 @09:18PM (#10120460)

Every spanish speaker can understand and speak Neutral Spanish. The one taught in schools, universities and spoken in dubbed movies. In the same way every english speaker can understand and speak Hollywood English.

In a way, the dialects of spanish are even more regular than the dialects of english. For instance, the spelling is the same of everybody (regulated by The Real Academia Español) and almost everything is spelling phonetically, so the changes in pronunciation are quite regular. If you understand written spanish you can master any pronunciation just by learning a few regular rules.

There are differences in tenses and plenty of slang, but this can be sidestepped by speaking formally (where the are no variation in tenses and there is little difference in vocabulary).

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Re:WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreig... by foldr on Tuesday August 25, 2015 @04:36PM (#10119261)

>Spain has an entire verb tense that is not in Mexican Spanish.

Are you sure you mean tense? The verb has an additional form in each tense because of vosotros, but there are no additional tenses so far as I know.

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Re:WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreig... by schoen on Tuesday August 25, 2015 @04:59PM (#10119413)

It would probably be most accurate to say that it's an extra person.

Verbs can be inflected in various languages for gender, number, person [which can include degrees of formality, respect, or social distance], voice, mood, tense, aspect, ergativity [an alternative to voice], evidentiality [how the speaker knows that the thing happened], and other things I'm probably forgetting.

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Re:WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreig... by foldr on Tuesday August 25, 2015 @06:01PM (#10119737)

Yes, I know. As far as I know, Mexican Spanish has all the same tenses as European Spanish but lacks a second person familiar plural, and hence the associated form of the verb in each tense.

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Re:WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreig... by stephengillie on Tuesday August 25, 2015 @08:36PM (#10120336)

The first person informal plural (vos, vosotros) form of verbs isn't used outside Spain. Or maybe it's just not used in Latin America. Source: high school Spanish.

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Re:WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreig... by afy on Tuesday August 25, 2015 @09:29PM (#10120490)

There are parts of south america where vosotros is used, but I think what the parent was getting at is that it is not technically considered a 'tense', but rather a 'person' as in e.g. 'third person'

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Re:WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreig... by Shorel on Tuesday August 25, 2015 @09:57PM (#10120578)

In Colombia, the use of 'vos' means the person is from the region where sugarcane is cultivated, or the cities around.

That means Cali, Buenaventura and some others.

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Re:WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreig... by foldr on Wednesday August 26, 2015 @09:08AM (#10122603)

Yes, that's why I said "because of vosotros" in my post.

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Re:WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreig... by selimthegrim on Tuesday September 08, 2015 @09:26AM (#10185499)

I thought it was used in Argentina at least?

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Re:WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreig... by tomc1985 on Tuesday August 25, 2015 @05:44PM (#10119650)

It's not just Spain either... Chile uses 'vosotros' as a sort-of-weird version of 'tu' (with some dropped sounds) e.g. 'como estas?' becomes 'como estai?' and sounding like 'como etai?'

Also: tire / tire shop: llanata / llanteria (mexico), neumatico / (tienda de) vulcanizacion (chile). Corn: maiz (mexico), choclo (chile). Car: coche (mexico), auto (chile). etc etc etc

(I'm not latin, I just like traveling there, so dont take the above as gospel :)

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