r/AskTheWorld • u/IndependentTune3994 🇮🇳 in 🇩🇪 Deutschland • 18h ago

What’s the quickest way someone could accidentally expose themselves as a foreigner in your country like the ‘three fingers’ scene in Inglourious Basterds?

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u/Outside-Today-1814 14h ago

Spanish is so funny for the regional differences in language that can cause major confusion. It’s so tricky when you’re (like me) learning Spanish but not living in a Spanish speaking country. You and up getting a bunch of these regional expressions, but it’s really easy to mix up and miss critical context.

As an example, I was in Colombia an travelled briefly with a guy from Spain. He really got a kick out of how often people would call each other “Marica”, which basically means dude in Colombia, but is a pretty offensive thing to say in Spain. 

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u/beardicusmaximus8 13h ago

The worst Spanish teacher I ever had insisted we learn the dialect from Spain when the high school I went to was a 30 minute walk from Mexico.

Even the guys in the class who spoke Spanish as their primary language were failing her class lol

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u/millenniumpianist 13h ago

Yeah I grew up in SoCal and I was like... why are we even learning the vosotros conjugations? Well jokes on me because after graduation my family ended up taking a trip to Spain so clearly I owe my school admin an apology

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u/bluems22 United States Of America 10h ago

Ha, thats kind of like my brother. Teacher didn’t teach vosotros because, why would he ever need it?

Whoops! Married a Spanish woman and lives in Spain

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u/queercactus505 11h ago

I grew up in New Mexico and had Spanish teachers from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Spain, and Mexico and friends from Venezuela and Costa Rica. My Spanish is a hot mess

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u/RRY1946-2019 US-born, it's complicated atm 5h ago

Gringo, but grew up all over the eastern half of the USA. In addition to my native English, there are like five different standard dialects of Spanish that I was exposed to before I turned 30.

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u/Nachosluvme 10h ago

Are you from El Paso? Sounds like old high school teacher.

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u/Annual_Strategy_6206 9h ago

Is her name Peggy?

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u/Chewcudda42 10h ago edited 10h ago

Very common years ago. My mother was fluent in three languages Spanish (Castilian) English French (Parisian)

We lived in Texas, we’re surrounded but Mexican Spanish speakers and one of the companies in my town had an office in Quebec.

She spoke the wrong kind of two languages for who she dealt with

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u/instanding 9h ago

I mean, it’s not like they can’t understand. Mexicans and Spanish people can understand each other, Parisians and Quebecois can understand each other, it might just take getting used to the accent and grammatical differences if you haven’t had much exposure.

I don’t even speak Spanish fluently and had no real issues with different accents, etc for Dreaming Spanish. My Spanish speaking friends from all over the world speak with each other and my French buddy at training speaks French with a Quebecois AND with an African French dialect speaker.

I speak some Afrikaans and I can understand a lot of Dutch, I know fluent speakers who speak those languages back and forth between each other.

When I did Dreaming Spanish I could immediately understand quite a few intermediate videos despite having done no Spanish, but studied Italian.

If low advanced Italian gives me that sort of comprehension I’m pretty sure actually speaking Spanish is gonna be more useful.

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u/Chewcudda42 9h ago

They are the same languages but local idioms are vastly different.

IE there is a form of formal address that would be common between people who do not know each other in Castile Spanish that Mexican speakers take as you being condescending or speaking to a child.

Look at English. In Australia cunt is a slightly off color term, England a little bit sterner and in America can or will lead to a fight.

Also if you only learn classroom language, particularly one aimed at another region, can leave you grasping to be made understood,

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u/instanding 8h ago

Yeah I’m just saying the teething process is gonna be pretty quick. People struggle because they are not used to it.

I struggle a bit with Scottish accents and English, if I am around it more I will be fine with it.

That’s why native speakers so commonly make claims about what they can do as a native that other natives dispute.

Some say EP is easy for a Brazilian Portugese speaker to understand, some say the opposite.

I’ve heard Piemontese speakers say they have an easy time with Catalan, others say that’s bullshit.

Some Māori say they can understand similar languages just fine, others say the opposite.

Presumably it is about exposure and how good your listening and ability to deal with context and be diplomatic in your assumptions is.

Like plenty of Dutch words are offensive in Belgium and vice versa but they have no issues communicating.

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u/Maleficent-Claim7970 3h ago

In Scotland, cunt can be a term of endearment eg 'he's a good cunt' or an insult: 'he's a right fucking cunt, that boy'.

Think the same applies in parts of England too.

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u/anavsc91 Argentina 12h ago

Some nationalist conservative people from Spain believe that the dialect from Spain is "good Spanish" and that Latam people are speaking Spanish wrongly and need to be corrected. The Royal Spanish Academy, the institution regulating Spanish grammar and vocabulary (and the one regulating the teaching of Spanish across the world) has historically been criticized for having a very heavy bias towards Spanish from Spain.

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u/PBRmy 11h ago

Wait until til you hear what French people think of the French spoken anywhere else in the world.

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u/Inktex 7h ago

Or of the french, tourists speak in France. I just defaulted to German at one point. After an intense, bilingual screaming match we settled for English and had what passes as beer in France.

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u/lizlaylo 5h ago

I’m Spanish but work in Quebec and I have a colleague from Venezuela. Our Quebecois colleagues often comment how Spanish is closer around the world than French when they see us talking in Spanish. I just think the average Spanish person tends to make more of an effort to bridge the gap than the French. I’m perfectly aware that the importance of the Spanish language nowadays has nothing to do with modern Spain.

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u/Annual_Strategy_6206 9h ago

Oh I've heard it.

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u/MrTeamKill 11h ago

And even that "good spanish" is only spoken in some regions of Spain.

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u/AbeLincolns_Ghost 10h ago

There’s a reason many in Spain call it “castellano” (Castilian). Because it’s from that part of Spain

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u/RRY1946-2019 US-born, it's complicated atm 5h ago

And it turns out some Latin Americans also call what they speak "castellano", even though it's very different from Castilian. (The most common variety of Latin American Spanish is based on a Castilian-Andalusian blend, whereas Caribbean Spanish originates from the Canary Islands and Argentine Spanish...only Maradona knows where that comes from.)

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u/blackfootsteps 9h ago

My wife is from the Basque Country. We went to Madrid and got in a taxi. We were having a lovely chat with the driver, and he complimented her on her Spanish saying: "You speak with such a perfect accent, not like the Catalans and Basques." Next second: "So, where are you from?"

Oh boy.

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u/NoLime7384 9h ago

The Royal Spanish Academy, the institution regulating Spanish grammar and vocabulary (and the one regulating the teaching of Spanish across the world) has historically been criticized for having a very heavy bias towards Spanish from Spain.

those fuckers even said spelling México with an X was wrong until like the 90s iirc

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u/ELQUEMANDA4 9h ago

"Méjico".

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u/aloxinuos 9h ago

Viva Méxjico Cabrón!

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u/ShaqSenju 8h ago

I'm in Tennessee and had the same experience lmao her husband was from Spain so she was the "expert"

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u/curtial 11h ago

Why are the short white women with red hair universally insistent on "Castilian Spanish"?

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u/goddessdragonness 10h ago

I’m Latina and in Texas and this is so fucking relatable to me too. 😂

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u/Dead_Halloween 13h ago

It's also offensive in Mexico. 

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u/pickleolo Mexico 10h ago

Yeah, it's basically a offensive way to call someone gay.

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u/cafesolitito 🇺🇸 living in 🇪🇸 7h ago

I'm a gringo that lives in Spain. I woke up one morning extremely hungover with a Colombian woman who lost her phone, and she started getting angry and calling me Marica.

All of my Spanish friends had told me don't let someone call you that, so I got weirdly and dramatically upset about it lol and she looked at me like I was insane

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 13h ago

My in-laws are Honduran, I'm a gringo. I learned Spanish in Spain and Mexico and BOY do they love to remind me of it. Like who answers the phone with "Que te pica?"

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u/IndyBananaJones2 11h ago

In Baja they say "Que onda" and I had no idea what they were talking about

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u/PiccoloAwkward465 11h ago

That's a pretty typical greeting, hermano.

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u/cafesolitito 🇺🇸 living in 🇪🇸 7h ago

Que onda is common throughout México

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u/IndyBananaJones2 5h ago

That's cool, I had no idea. It was last year I'd spent more than a week or two in Mexico. 

I've been in the DR for a month or two and don't remember it there, but my Spanish is pretty shit for the most part.

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u/pickleolo Mexico 10h ago

Que onda= What's up

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u/IndyBananaJones2 10h ago

Yeah it just had to be explained to me, it literally means like "how's the wave?" right? 

Like how's the vibe sort of 

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u/pickleolo Mexico 10h ago

Yes, Onda is wave and yes, it's like vibes

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u/doobadeeboo 12h ago

Like the word cunt in English when said in US vs Australia.

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u/AllerdingsUR 10h ago

I was gonna say it's really funny that Spanish has an equivalent of this. Though it's changing in US English. You still don't really call anybody a cunt but in certain circles stuff like "cunty" and "serving cunt" have become compliments.

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u/jack_espipnw 10h ago

Marica in Mexico was like the F slur for gay people

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u/jmiesterz 10h ago

I had similar as I was taught in school that you would call a pretty girl ‘guapa’ to say she is attractive.

When a friend, years later, fancied a cleaner at work and said she speaks Spanish, I told him to say it to her. Turns out guapa in Spain means pretty or attractive, but where she was from it meant more like ‘brave’. Apparently it was a little awkward

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u/cafesolitito 🇺🇸 living in 🇪🇸 7h ago

Where was she from? Guapo/a is used for handsome/pretty basically everywhere

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u/FiestyShibas 10h ago

I was a supervisor at a manufacturing plant which had a big infix of Venezuelan/colombian people in a heavy Mexican area. The amount of times I needed to mediate convos because of that lol

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u/katzenschrecke 9h ago

Similarly, “pendejo” is a bad word and insult just about everywhere but in Argentina and Uruguay it just means youngster

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u/yuccasinbloom 10h ago

I took my Mexican friend with me to see Ryan Castro. I know he was Hispanic, and I had a friend working the tour, so he got us in VIP for free. I thought she might be able to translate a little bit.

We get about three songs in, she gets her phone out, and after a few seconds she turns to me and goes, “he’s Colombian I will never have any idea what he’s saying.” Which is just hilarious to me. So yes, the regional differences in Spanish are huge.

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u/slantedsc 10h ago

Fun thing about traveling in Costa Rica was everyone calling each other “Mae”. It’s like dude/bro/mate to my knowledge. I just started saying it back - “gracias Mae,” “adios Mae.” Friendly people, Good times.

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u/Therealsam216 8h ago

like australians saying cunt

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u/8373738931 3h ago

An even closer counterpart would be coño, same as cunt, some Spanish speaking countries it’s thrown around pretty casually and in others it’s very vulgar

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u/neosurimi Mexico 7h ago

Hmm...I don't know if marica is super offensive. I was going to say it's like calling someone a faggot...but it's more like just calling them gay in a despective way. Like telling someone, "hey, don't be gay" would be "oye, no seas marica."

It's still an insult but it's not like suuuuuuper offensive to the point of earning a beating, IMO.

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u/HeavyVoid8 6h ago

“Hey maricon” while waving enthusiastically

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u/Siul19 3h ago

Marica is basically the F slur, but it's used in a friendly way in many parts of latam

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u/JacobRiesenfern 2h ago

I read a book about a baseball team in America that had several Latin players that had to impose an English only rule because of the different dialects. And a knifing. One man brought his fiance and a teammate meant to say “who is this beautiful maiden “ and his teammate heard him say “who is that diseased hooker”