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Streetwise Spanish...a waste of time? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4348 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 1 of 9 12 September 2012 at 5:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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I just started using the Streetwise Spanish book/CD set, and in the very 1st dialog the
word "ruca" is used in what to me seems to be a completely erroneous manner: 2 guys are discussing a big blowout of a party, and one asks if there were a lot of chicks there, using the word "rucas." The book explains that this term means a girl or woman, "often a pretty" one. I already knew this word; I learned it in context from native sources, and am almost entirely certain that it actually means "old lady," and I've always heard it used in a derogatory fashion, equivalent to "old hag." However, "vieja" I know is used in this ironic way in slang, to mean something like "chick." Could it really be that ruca is also? I've certainly never heard it, which makes me wonder if this book is totally unreliable. BTW, this dialog is set in Los Angeles and is supposed to feature typically Mexican colloquial Spanish, which is the spoken variety that I've had the most exposure to. Maybe it's actually more "LA Spanish" than Mexican or even general Mexican-American, and maybe there "ruca" already underwent the ironic treatment that "vieja" did long ago. Even if the word has acquired this twist in LA and perhaps elsewhere, I'm still left doubting the general utility of this book. Although the focus is supposed to be on slang and colloquialisms, when it features a dialog that gives a minority slang-meaning for a word that has a very different and much more common meaning that is *also slang,* it should at least clarify that in the explanatory notes. It makes me suspect that the authors (both Anglos) actually have very little familiarity with the vocabulary they are purporting to teach, and that they just paid native speakers in various countries and cities to come up with regionally representative dialogs based around certain topics, accepting their definitions without any further research. EDIT: I just saw this in the vocab list at the end of the chapter: "la ruca- girl, woman (most of Latin America except the Southern Cone)" I also just checked my unabridged bilingual dictionary, which includes a fair amount of colloquialisms, especially those of the Americas (it's better for these than any monolingual dict I've seen). It has no definition for ruca (or ruco, confirming my belief that any use of this as a noun probably goes beyond colloquial usage and into slang,) but does have an adjective: "ruco, -ca adj. (L. Amer) worn-out, useless." Edited by Gala on 12 September 2012 at 5:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4660 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 2 of 9 12 September 2012 at 10:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have never used "ruca" in the same way as "viejas", just as you pointed out. It always
means to me "old hag". However, these things are prone to a lot of variation, so maybe in US they already use "ruca" with the "chick" connotation. Weird :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| justonelanguage Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4260 days ago 98 posts - 128 votes Speaks: English, Spanish | Message 3 of 9 12 September 2012 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Do you already know the general mexican slang? (no manches, carnal, vato, sale, cómo ves?, qué dices?, no mames, mano, guey, batallar, etc,etc?)
I don't think learning VERY specialized slang is that great unless you live in LA, for example. Of course, if you are interested in it, then it's definitely worth your time!
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| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4348 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 9 13 September 2012 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks, caam_int. I posted about this on another forum where I received confirmation from other native speakers (1 in Mexico [the DF] and 1 from the Caribbean [they didn't say precisely where]) that they have always heard "ruca" used just as you said, and are also unfamiliar with it being used to mean an attractive girl or woman, or as just a general term for girls/women. They both mentioned that "ruco" is also sometimes used (the Caribbean source compared it to "old geezer,") and the Mexican lady said that "los rucos" is sometimes used by young people to refer disrespectfully to their parents. She also cautioned that, especially when applied to women, it's very offensive....as I thought. I also heard from a Spaniard who'd never heard the word at all, not even as an adjective, although he found that form in the RAE dictionary, which attributed it to Central America. As for the US, I did some digging and found evidence of the use the book refers to (at least in California and Texas, although of course the book misrepresents it as being "the" meaning in all of Latin America, except the Southern Cone.)It seems to come from the Mexican-American cholo subculture, in which "ruca" is also more specifically used to refer to girlfriends/wives, in the same way that men in biker gangs in the US refer to their wives/girlfriends as "my old lady." This usage has even spread to some gringos, due to a love-song by Sublime entitled "My Ruca." Edited by Gala on 13 September 2012 at 6:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4348 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 5 of 9 13 September 2012 at 7:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm familiar with all of those words/ phrases (although I wouldn't use most of them), but for "vato" I only know how it's used, not its literal meaning nor its derivation (though "bato" for bumpkin or fool [a pretty different meaning than "vato"] I've found in the dictionary). Do you know if it's specifically Mex-American? ¿Cómo ves/ qué dices? and batallar I didn't even view as specifically Mexican, I thought they were standard. Do they have specifically Mexican slang-meanings besides their obvious ones? One that puzzles me (although I know how it's used) is "ese," which I believe is only or originally Mex-American (in its slang context.) How did "that" come to be a casual, friendly form of address for men? I really don't want to go out of my way to learn slang that is that regionally specific; I was hoping that the book would concentrate on slang and colloquialisms that are used or at least understood in most regions. But what really annoys me is that, judging from how they present "ruca," this book can't even be trusted to give you accurate info on important regional differences. For example, if "ruca" had been presented exactly as it was in the LA dialog, and explained in that context, it wouldn't have bothered me........IF they had also explained how it's used in Mexico, the Caribbean and (I imagine) other places. But they apparently didn't know (though they pretended to.) This is especially troubling as the word in question is offensive in those regions. Edited by Gala on 14 September 2012 at 3:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Peregrinus Senior Member United States Joined 4290 days ago 149 posts - 273 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 9 14 September 2012 at 2:56am | IP Logged | |||||
You seem like you want to learn general slang, so why did you pick a book on street slang, a specialized subset? It seems fairly obvious that this book focuses on the slang of inner-core big-city USA, i.e that of the barrio, with likely a healthy dose of gang slang. Is that your target audience? If not, why not just chuck the book and find another instead of spending time finding possible errors. Decent large Spanish-English dictionaries should also be a moderately useful sources of slang, noted as "familiar" and "colloquial". Edited by Peregrinus on 14 September 2012 at 2:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4348 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 7 of 9 14 September 2012 at 3:31am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, the title gave me pause, but I liked the idea of a book that focused on slang and colloquialisms in the form of lessons and dialog (rather than in dictionary-like format, of which kind I already have a couple) and this was the only one fitting that description other than another series that also has "street" in the title:) The subtitle is "Speak and Understand Everyday Spanish: The Practical Guide to Contemporary Slang and Colloquial Expressions Across the Spanish Speaking World."The first chapter features dialogues set in LA, but the next focuses on Santiago, Chile, the next Miami, then Santander, Spain, etc. As I've tried to convey, what really annoys me is not the fact that they used this alternate sub-meaning for "ruca." Now I know that this makes sense for that chapter, as it's set in LA. What gets me is that they don't tell you about the other (more common) slang-meaning, and in fact claim that the alternate sub-meaning of the dialog is "the" meaning for a huge swath of Latin America. If I continue to use this book, I guess I'll just have to assume that any unfamiliar vocabulary or meanings it presents may only be applicable to the area the dialog takes place, despite whatever it says to the contrary in its explanations. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| justonelanguage Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4260 days ago 98 posts - 128 votes Speaks: English, Spanish | Message 8 of 9 14 September 2012 at 4:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've talked to my native-speaking friends (one was Colombian, another Chilean) and "batallar" is pretty Mexican. They used it a lot in Mexico when I was there, too.
"vato"=guey/mano, etc. I thought that it was "old" slang but it is still very-widely used, by young folks too. "Cómo ves" and "qué dices" are very mexican. That's all they say in Mexico. :) "ese" is not Mexican. It's chicano...when Mexican/americans speak in English. FYI (if you didn't know), the people from the Distrito Federal are known as "chilangos."
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