an open letter to my neighbors

[summerless_year]

Queridos vecinos del dpto. 505,

Si bien se están preguntando qué  demonios estoy haciendo aquí en el 605, porque les tinka que estoy arrastrando, pieza por pieza, cada mueble que tengo en el departamento desde un lado al otro, pues... Efectivamente eso es lo que estoy haciendo. Pieza por pieza. Cada mueble. La cama, los estantes, los veladores, la

Comments

[wickedeyes]

cachtitos? I've never heard that word. I mainly use trenzas for pigtails.

[ti_ana]

When I hear "trenza", I immediately think of a braid. Though a quick look at wordreference.com reveals that it can indeed be used for "pigtails" as well. So that's interesting (and confusing).

[summerless_year]

I meant cachitos, because of the lack of braiding sometimes. To me pigtails can be braided or not. Though I grew up saying "bunches" which is probably a yiddishism translated to English.

[ti_ana]

That's good, actually. I wouldn't say "qué en demonios", though, I'd just say "qué demonios". Y lo de "tinka" es nuevo para mí. ¿Es un "chilenismo"? (Por cierto, a mí me encanta aprender estas palabritas dialectales de toda Latino América.)

[summerless_year]

qué demonios it is . I shall change it. Tinka es un chilenismo. Vamos al cine, te tinka? Te tinka venir a mi casa? Me tinka que ella es de otro lugar. I think of it as "wanna, feel like, and I guess."

And I said cachitos because they're not braids, just pigtails. (I said cachtitos, but that was a typo). I guess it means like "little horns." Sometimes they're braided, sometimes not.

And thanks for the vote of confidence. Written Spanish is not really my forté. Especially since it stays still and just hangs there, for all the grammatical errors to be observed! Strangely, messenger has been helpful in getting over my fear of writing in Spanish.

[ti_ana]

I have a Chilean friend here (well, Chilean-Korean) who says "¿chacha?" a lot at the end of sentences. By the context, I managed to infer that it meant something like "¿verdad?" or "¿no?", which I think was pretty close. She said it means something like "¿entiendes?". So I thought that was neat. Also an Argentine friend was using a different word for gasoline... actually, she used a whole different phrase than I did for "to put gas in the car". I remember she used the verb "cargar", but she didn't say "gasolina" and for the life of me, now I can't remember what it was. Anyway, it was fascinating. [/dork]

Oh, and that's interesting, about being afraid of writing in Spanish. I'm just the opposite with Italian. I feel much more comfortable writing in Italian than speaking it. It's something I've been working on for the past 6 or 7 months or so, but I'm still not where I want to be!

[summerless_year]

it's usually cachai, which is our funny little pretend voseo second person ending. For familiarity and informality