Articles and Stories

July 22, 2014

Are you bilingual? Do you live in a country where your second language is spoken? If so, let me guess; you have tried to say something in your second language that makes no sense to the native speakers of your second language, but in your mind it makes perfect sense.

I am not talking about grammatically incorrect sentences, but rather about literal translations of expressions that even in your native language are hard to understand. These expressions I am referring to are not just proverbs. These are expressions that have been used historically in a particular context and have been used throughout the centuries, even if the historic and contextual facts have changed.

I’ve had my share of saying some odd things in the past in conversations with my husband. Mind you, I always make sure to give him an explanation of the meaning since he is not a native speaker of Spanish, but even then, he finds them utterly strange. His questions often force me to look into their origin and share with him my findings. There are often some nice surprises that make everything so much clearer and easier to remember for a non-native speaker, as it is the case with the examples below:

Hacer un frío que pela = it is so cold that it peels. If you ever visit Spain, you’ll hear locals use this expression very frequently when the cold temperatures demand it. According to the etymological explanation, this expression dates back to 1950, when a French expedition (the first to conquer the Annapurna peak in the Himalayas) experienced an unexpected storm before reaching the top of the mountain. The temperatures dropped 15°C from one day to the next, causing the majority of their food provisions to spoil, but one of the few items that didn’t was several pounds of almonds (rich in caloric contents). Apparently, despite the cold temperatures and their finger’s limited ability to move, the expedition observed that the almonds were peeling more easily than when in hotter temperatures.

Tener la cara dura = having a hard face (being a cheeky person). After the 1627 bankruptcy during King Philip IV’s reign, imitations of some of the most circulating coins proliferated in Spain. There were even some more daring individuals who reproduced high value coins such as the golden doubloon, which could be used to buy plenty of food for the average family. Since no one used to go to the market with a doubloon to buy food, counterfeiters would first approach the money changers to try and get the smallest coins. Initially, few realized the deceit, but gradually word began to spread that the fake coins had imperfections on the face (heads) side, where most of the iron alloy accumulated, while the tin would accumulate on the tails side. So these coins were said to have “a very soft tail and a very hard face”, a phrase which soon was shortened to the second part of the expression and later gave rise to the word “caradura” (“chutzpah”) which referred to the counterfeiters.

I presume that, when these expressions came up, little had to be explained about how they came about; however, while we nowadays use them frequently, the historic distance with their first appearance in language makes it hard to remember and therefore explain. Most speakers only know the meaning of such expressions by frequent use in specific contexts, not necessarily because they know their origin, so don’t be surprised if when asking for an explanation, you simply get a shrug.