Free Spanish Lesson 57. ¡Salud a tu mami [maw-mee]!

Vocabulary For the Newsletter – Vocabulario para el boletín

esta semana – this week

un aspecto – an aspect

cultura – culture

disfruto – I enjoy

familiarizado – familiar

esta parte – this part

cuando – when

familias – families

amigo – friend

hogares – homes

padres – parents

puerta – door

algo muy interesante – something very interesting

cultura diferente – different culture

gente – people

unos meses después – a few months later

diferencia – difference

palabras – words

esto representa – this represents

cortés – courteous

alguien – someone

muchas veces – many times

cienes – hundreds

a veces – sometimes

la semana pasada – last week

años – years

mandarme saludos – to send me greetings (say hi to me)

nuevo idioma – new language

español – Spanish

amistades – friendships

crece – grows

Esta semana we are going to talk about un aspecto of the Latin cultura that I admire and disfruto.

I first became familiarizado with esta parte of the cultura cuando I was visiting familias in Latin America with a native Spanish amigo. When we visited hogares where we realized that the padres weren’t home, and children had opened the puerta, before leaving, my native amigo would always say what sounded like, “Salud a tu mami [maw-mee]” or “Salud a tu papi [paw-pea]”.

This means “Health to your mom”, or “Health to your dad”. I thought this was algo muy interesante to say but realized that I was in a cultura diferente where gente must go around wishing each other good “health” all the time.

I had to laugh at myself unos meses después, cuando I finally realized that he was saying “Saluda a tu mami” instead of “Salud a tu mami”. There is a very small diferencia in spelling but a big diferencia in meaning between these two palabras. “Salud” means “health” and “Saluda a tu mami” means “Say hello to your mom”.

Esto representa one of the many things that the Latin gente do that I really admire. They are a very polite and cortés people and generally a little more formal than Americans are. In Latin America if you tell alguien to say “hi” to someone else, they will usually do it.

Not only that, muchas veces they will actually go out of their way to do it. There were cienes of times when I heard alguien say to someone else “Say hi to Juan” or “Maria”, and later I actually heard them go out of their way to do it.

In America, my experience has usually been that if alguien tells you to say “hi” to someone else, a veces it gets back to them and a veces it doesn’t; usually gente don’t go out of their way to say “hi” to someone else like they do in Latin America.

La semana pasada I wrote about some Latin amigos I hadn’t seen for a few años who recently came to visit me in the U.S. The first thing they did, after telling me I was “gordo”, was to “mandarme saludos” from all of the gente who knew they were coming and wanted to say “hi” to me. They said, “Fernando te manda saludos”, etc. etc. etc.

Moral of the historia: When learning a nuevo idioma, a veces you hear palabras that you think mean one thing, and you later find out that they mean something completely diferente. This happened to me muchas veces while learning and becoming fluent in español.

Also, I am so impressed with how polite gente are with each other in the Latin cultura. Amistades mean a lot to them and if you ever tell alguien to say “hi” to someone else, you can almost guarantee that it will happen.

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Written by David S. Clark President/Director, U.S. Institute of Languages. Copyright © 1999-2010 US Institute of Languages All rights reserved.

Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.