Foxy Lady wrote:
> "Richard Periut" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>>Foxy Lady wrote:
>>
>>>"Richard Periut" > wrote in message
...
>>>
>>
>>Sandra,
>>
>>You got it a bit confused.
>>
>>You don't ask a Cuban for a papaya because of what it resembles; you ask
>>for "fruta bomba" and to Dominicans you ask for a "lechosa"
>>
>>Cubans call an insect a "bicho" PR's use it for the meaning of; well you
>>know.
>>
>>You don't say "bollo" when you want bread in a Cuban bakery, you say
>>"flauta de pan,".
>>
>>Bolsa is for Dominicans, what "bicho" is for PR's. And for Cubans, it is
>>actually a real word: a long rod that the chinese use for carrying
>>buckets on their necks ( a pinga.)
>>
>>For Cubans, bolsa, funda, cartucho all mean the same, and are not
>>offensive.
>>
>>I don't mean to sound like a pervert, it's just that I want our non
>>spanish speaking people here to understand the meanings : )
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Richard
>
>
> One of my bosses in PR is Cuban, and there is a large community of both
> Cubas and Dominicans in PR... Mr Sosa would constantly try to correct his
> employees (and customers!) when selling/buying cement, or asking for a
> shopping bag, etc. I can hear him now, "No se dice bolsa, se dice FUNDA"...
> and the Cubans I went to school with were the same... I have no idea why
> there would be a difference in how they speak "Cuban" in PR...
>

Sandra,

I don't know why; but me and my family have been using the word "bolsa"
ever since I could remember. Maybe those Cubans are from Oriente? It
seems that the mountain range there prevented interchange between the
various pueblos while the guajiros "jibaros" where settling them?




> As for Dominicans, my personal experience with them is from visiting
> relatives of a neighbor (from PR) who live in Santo Domingo and having a
> Neo-Rican-Minican compadre, all of whom were horrified when I asked for
> pegao and kept insisting that I say "con-con" because they didn't want
> anyone to overhear me asking for sex... and I'm not even going to get into
> what happened when one of them asked me out!!! LOL!!!
>

For Cubans it's called "raspa" which to a certain extent, is offensive
for Dominicans. Then again, their modern merengues are chock full of
(doble sentidos.)

Funny, I use the word "zafacon" (trash bin) which I don't know where I
got it from; maybe from hearing Hector Lavoe in Periodico De Ayer : )
But Cubans don't use that word.



> I didn't want to get into the papaya/lechosa thing because I thought it too
> much, but I guess it's ok because it's food related <smile>... as far as
> bicho is concerned, I believe PR is the only place where it doesn't mean
> insect, but pinga means the same thing as bicho in PR...

Didn't know that.

>
> And if we start with the different words used by our South and Central
> American friends, we'd have to create a new newsgroup to discuss them
> because there are so many of them!
>
> Spanish may be a very simple language as far as pronunciation, but it's so
> rich in the various ways people use the same words that we could be talking
> for hours on end about it.
>

I believe Spanish is more complicated than English. For one thing, it
uses accents (something I haven't dominated very well, since I was born
and raised here in the USA, and didn't write too much Spanish.) Second,
I've tried reading the Spanish classics (Cervante, et cetera,) and find
myself looking up words I never ever heard. I tried reading Jose Marti's
Edad De Oro, and found myself reading the paragraphs over again,
because I didn't understand half the words. Consider, that if you hear
me speak Spanish, you'll quickly see that I have no "American" accent
(same with English,) and that I have quite a decent vocabulary.

Getting back to food; there are a couple of other things:

pumpkin = calabaza for Cubans, = yautia for Dom. PR??

Cubans say Mamey (a fruit not very well known in the USA,) but called
Zapote in DR. Cubans call something else a Zapote. PR?

Frog is rana for Cubans, but in DR it's called maco. PR? I remember as a
kid in PR, collecting Coquis, only to have them die a week later in a NJ
terrarium. I also rem they didn't let me sleep when I visited my aunt in
Aguadilla.

Regards,

Richard

> Regards,
>
> Sandra
>
>
>
>
>



--
"..A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava
beans and a nice chianti..."

Hannibal "The Cannibal"

Silence Of The Lambs 1991