20 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3
Old Chemist
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4963 days ago
227 posts - 285 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German
| Message 17 of 20 12 October 2010 at 9:50am | IP Logged |
fireflies wrote:
getreallanguage wrote:
Old Chemist wrote:
| Can anyone tell me about the Spanish word "bendigo?" I have heard it in a lot of films - if I have spelt it correctly - but I have not been able to find out exactly what the English equivalent is. |
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You might have misheard 'bendito', which is the masculine for the adjective for 'blessed'. 'Bendito' is sometimes used in Spanish as an ironic, tongue-in-cheek or mild form of 'maldito' (damned), which is basically like using 'f*cking' as an adjective in English. For example, 'el bendito ingeniero ya me tiene harto' (roughly 'the good engineer is driving me up the wall'), where the real meaning of 'bendito' is exactly the opposite. |
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Thanks for your posts, I think the "blessed" answer must be correct. It definitely is pretty common and it clearly is not meant in a nice way! My Spanish comprehension is good enough to understand the thread on imagining the future, thanks for that too.
Apologies, William Camden. I do agree with you. I think it is best to steer well away from swearwords. No-one but a fool would use an expression disrespecting an enemy's parents in a foreign language, but, not having been brought as a native, how can we know of the effect of other swearwords? I think we have all met foreigners who are fluent in English but painfully sprinkle coarse and vile sounding expressions into their speech which revolts us. Be warned!
Pendejo sort of sounds like bendigo too but that seems less likely to be mistaken for bendigo. |
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1 person has voted this message useful
| JimC
Senior Member
United Kingdom
tinyurl.com/aberdeen
Joined 5337 days ago
199 posts - 317 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish
| Message 18 of 20 12 October 2010 at 11:25am | IP Logged |
getreallanguage wrote:
Old Chemist wrote:
| Can anyone tell me about the Spanish word "bendigo?" I have heard it in a lot of films - if I have spelt it correctly - but I have not been able to find out exactly what the English equivalent is. |
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You might have misheard 'bendito', which is the masculine for the adjective for 'blessed'. 'Bendito' is sometimes used in Spanish as an ironic, tongue-in-cheek or mild form of 'maldito' (damned), which is basically like using 'f*cking' as an adjective in English. For example, 'el bendito ingeniero ya me tiene harto' (roughly 'the good engineer is driving me up the wall'), where the real meaning of 'bendito' is exactly the opposite. |
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My Spanish is still in it's early stages, but wouldn't bendigo simply be the first person singular form of the verb bendecir, to bless
1 person has voted this message useful
| Old Chemist
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4963 days ago
227 posts - 285 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: German
| Message 19 of 20 12 October 2010 at 11:44pm | IP Logged |
JimC wrote:
My Spanish is still in it's early stages, but wouldn't bendigo simply be the first person singular form of the verb bendecir, to bless |
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I believe you are right. My Spanish is probably at an even earlier stage than yours - I have learnt most of what I know "osmotically," by comparison to Italian (I have an "A" level in it) and so my knowledge is pretty sketchy, but I can read it fairly well. I think there is an analogy to English here: when we say I couldn't get the "blessed" thing to work, which I certainly have, it is a euphemistic usage, and a pretty strong swearword is what is really meant. Do you know the German word "selig"? It is cognate with the English word "silly," which in earlier times meant holy, blessed and only gradually took on the disrepectful meaning and lost its original one.
Edited by Old Chemist on 12 October 2010 at 11:45pm
1 person has voted this message useful
| Deshwi
Triglot
Newbie
Canada
Joined 5390 days ago
31 posts - 38 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
Studies: Arabic (Written), Turkish, Hindi, Persian
| Message 20 of 20 13 October 2010 at 7:44am | IP Logged |
Deji wrote:
In Hindi or Bengali DON'T call someone a "sala". Literally it means "brother-in-law". In common street use it is a lot
worse than "god-damned son of a bitch". Now how this got the meaning that it has--as a videshi, I leave it to a
deshi to explain-- or theorize about. |
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I think that "sala" is an insult because it implies 'knowing' the other persons sister.
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