MovieChat Forums > El internado (2007) Discussion > Spanish language question

Spanish language question

posted 8 years ago by dmcdknf
3 replies | jump to latest

I grew up in Northern California, so my Spanish is highly based on colloquial Mexican. I have a couple of questions on commonly used words:

1) "Te quiero" rather than "Te amo" in romantic situations. I would use quiero in situations meaning "want" and amo for "love", they seem to use quiero for both all the time. No one ever escalated to amo. Is that common?

2) "Huevos" rather than "cajones" when saying that someone had no (or needed some) balls. Here we would definitely say cajones. Is it common to use huevos or is this sanitized for TV maybe?

The other thing is the lisp on the "s". For example, for policia we would say "po-lee-see-a" and they say "po-leeth-ee-a". I just never notices how often s is used before.

[–] Triptipr 8 years ago

1 in Latin America spanish, you say "te quiero" to your friends, cousins, etc.. and "te amo" it's for your significant other when you are in love. In Spain "te quiero" is used for both, "te amo" sounds to them like too corny.
2- "cojones" is the same as "huevos" and it's a bad word as well. I think that mexicans also use the word cojones.
3- In Latin American, the letters "c" (in syllables such as "ci" or "ce") and "z" are pronounced just as the "s": zapatos=sapatos whereas in Spain the pronunciation is similar to the "th" in think.

[–] dmcdknf 8 years ago

Much obliged! Thank you. My Spanish is casual and not exactly fluent, so your response was very helpful.

[–] yinacnc 7 years ago

Wow if it isn't late for this reply :o

1) "Te quiero" somehow sounds less deep of strong than "te amo" because te amo I wold say it to my parents, really, really close family and friends and significant other

2) "Huevos" rather than "cajones" even though both mean the same I guess that's like comparing british english with US version of it but "huevos" sounds more vulgar to me.

"The other thing is the lisp on the "s". For example, for policia we would say "po-lee-see-a" and they say "po-leeth-ee-a". I just never notices how often s is used before."

Spanish pronounce the "S" as "Z" so thats like "Bettah" and "Better" sort of thing