20 October 2011

¿Cómo se llama? 3 Things That You Should Know

+Here's the story of a lovely lady statue in Lima, Peru. Her name is Madre Patria and she lives in Plaza San Martín. The plaza was built to celebrate Peru's 100th independence day and the statue of the Madre Patria is part of a large monument that was commissioned to honor General José de San Martín. When they decided to build a statue, Peru had a contest to see who could come up with the best idea. Luckily (for the sake of comedy and llama-lovers everywhere), Spaniard Mariano Benlliure won with his highly unique sculpture of a guy on a horse. Peru liked with his idea but sent a memo to the Spain saying that they wanted him to include a statue of a lady wearing a crown of flames who would hold up the sign announcing the general. Unfortunately, homophones weren't exactly Benlliure's strong point and he confused the word for flame--llama--with the word for those cute animals that live in the Andes and spit a lot. Behold:

Story courtesy of Alison, who called me this week to tell me about her trip to Peru.

+My phenomenal family came over to eat and play Mad Gab on my birthday and we filmed my dad bringing a whole new meaning to the word "fupa."


+I would not eat a Krispy Kreme for love or for money, but these guys sound like they could be everything I desire in a food. They are, incidentally, also Peruvian.

3 Comments:

Fiorella said...

Aparentemente, la historia de los errores homófonos sucede en la mayoría de los países sudamericanos. América Latina está plagado de situaciones similares suscitadas durante el comisionamiento de las diversas construcciones de monumentos patrios. Podrás escuchar acerca de ellos en Argentina, en mi país Paraguay, también encuentras historias similares en Uruguay, Bolivia, Venezuela y ahora me entero que Perú tampoco estuvo exento de ellos. Igual, es una anécdota interesante, ya que llama no había aparecido previamente en las historias del resto de los países latinos mencionados.

And by way, I’m absolutely assuming you have a decent spanish knowledge(if the title and those few spanish words used in your story, can actually tell this)which pretty much contradicts my utterly lame capacity to write properly in english,so…here i’m hoping to be right about your spanish, if not…well... isn't always great to learn another language?…besides, most sentences sounds better in spanish...o eso me gustaría creer acerca de mi bonito idioma.

Y por último, I would really like to know...qué son exactamente los krispi meet?

laura said...

really? that's hilarious. it's weird how little words can make such a big difference when you cross borders. i know "fanny" definitely means different things in the uk and the u.s. and i've made my fair share of errors when it comes to words like "coger" in spain and south america. but to see those mistakes literally carved into stone is a whole new level of lost in translation.

no pasa nada! es obvio que hablas inglés mejor que hablo español porque no sé como se dice "utterly lame" en español. de hecho, mis amigos hispanohablantes me han dicho que hablo demasiado formalmente porque aprendía el idioma en la escuela no sé el argot. bueno, de todas formas estoy de acuerdo contigo: todo suena mejor en español.

Fiorella said...

indeed true…i used to delude myself thinking the english that i learnt in my high school years, was actually the way people speak..that was my first wrong assumption, still i decided to test my theory and i went abroad, to the lovely ireland. once there though, my real struggle with the language began…the way they speak was completely different to what i was familiar with. again, trying to be positive about my knowledge, i thought maybe it’s just the irish way of speaking english (they do have this peculiar funny accent), for that reason i went to see others cities...first london, then belfast but my comprehension and speaking weren't making any progress, in fact it was becoming a real challenge for me to speak and understand what they were saying without trying really hard, and in my last attempt to prove myself, i decided to go to scotland and there i reached a whole new level of frustration!...it was literally impossible for me to understand a single sentence from the scottish…y ahí terminé recurriendo al uso del lenguaje universal de señas! una imagen memorable sin lugar a dudas…

returning to dublin, i decided I’ve got to learn something and i ended up learning the ”other spanish” which included hundred of slangs that i would never get the chance to use again in south america, such as: ostia, vale, molar, flipar, joder, tío, maja… and the ever present use of the second person: quereís, haceís..(that was the beginning of my love for the second person, which is another thing that I’ll never use in this side of the world, but anyway, I like to hear it from my spanish friends). i guess it was just convenience for my alternative language learning, that dublin was full of spanish students…

all in all, it was an amazing experience, not for my english though :)…but still, the europeans are really friendly people, so i decided that must count for something.

y sí, tienes razón, no existe una traducción literal para “utterly lame” y ni siquiera sé si es correcta la frase, ya que tiendo a escribir en inglés pero sin traducirlo al español, así que la mayor parte de lo que escribo puede carecer de sentido y termina siendo una serie de divagues ;) igual, mis divagues tenían el propósito de probar que probablemente tu conocimiento del español sea mayor que mi conocimiento del inglés, después de todo, dudo que alguna vez hayas tenido que recurrir al lenguaje de señas ;)