Monday, October 20, 2014

Spanish Spanish

    So, I'm almost halfway through my stay here in Spain. It's crazy to think about, but my stay here is almost over. There's so much that I still want to do and I'm only just realizing all the things that I will not be able to accomplish. Oh well, that just means that I'll have to come and visit sometime :)
   This blog was inspired by my ever so lovely friend, Sam Falsetta who is currently studying in Chile. She is also blogging for CMU (go check out her blog! Here's a link: http://bit.ly/1utgIE8) and she did a blog about the differences between bathrooms across countries. I don't really have anything to add there, except that I was surprised when I went to Belgium and I had to pay for the bathroom! It was a little strange.
       What I do have to comment on is her ¿Dónde está el baño? This is great advice- for Central and South America. But in Spain? Not so much. Here, bathrooms are called aseos. There's a distinction between a bathroom that just has a toilet and a sink (like a public bathroom) and a bathroom that has a shower and/or a bathtub. A baño is the one that has a shower and/or a bathtub and it's called that because that is where you bathe yourself or, in Spanish, bañarse. That was something interesting to find out when we got here.
     Something else that's different between Spain and the rest of the Spanish speaking world is the verb cojer. In Spain it is similar to the verb tomar which is "to take". Now, if you go around saying this verb in Central and South America, you'll get some strange looks to say the least. Without going into too much detail, cojer is a sexual reference in those parts of the world. So, just be aware.
       To end on a better note than the last example, we're going back to food, my favorite subject. So here, there are two different terms for sandwich- bocadillo and sándwich. While these two words have the same meaning in English, they are two different things here in Spain, though the difference isn't too extreme. A bocadillo is a sandwich that is made with French bread (and it makes sandwiches 1,000x better) whereas a sándwich is just like a regular sandwich from the States. If you want to know more or if you need a refresher on bocadillos I definitely talked about them in my food blog :)
      These are just a few things that I could think of that are specific to the Spanish of Spain. There are some more technical things like how they use the verb form vosotros when talking about a group of people instead of ellos/Ustedes, which is viewed as more formal. Bocadillos are a lot more fun to talk about, though.

Since it's hard to have pictures of grammar, here is a picture of French fries.
They might be my favorite French fries that I've tried in Spain.