I am Angela and I love words. I teach Spanish online for a living, I learn languages as a hobby.
The thing with Spanish is that it is used across a vast territory, and in different countries we use it differently, or very differently. I’ve lived in Uruguay, Argentina and Spain. Some words are used in everyday life in Spain are vulgar in Uruguay and Argentina, and viceversa. When I moved from Uruguay to Spain, I was in a bad place mentally (I also used to be a bit of a prude) and swore to myself I’d never use the word ‘culo’.
In Latin America we say ‘trasero’, ‘cola’, ‘asentaderas’, or whatever we need, in order to not to say ‘culo’. You only hear ‘culo’ together with the words ‘romper’, ‘roto’, ‘gordo’, ‘sucio’, or in the expression ‘tiene el culo lleno de papelitos’. ‘Culo’ is a bad word there. So, I moved to Spain, and in the aquaerobics class the instructor said that we had to ‘mover el culo’. The doctors call it ‘culo’. There was no way around it. Everybody said ‘culo’. It wasn’t a bad word. I gave in, and started to have ‘dolor de culo’ if I sat for too long, or went to a spinning class. From there everything went better. I’ve got interested in the different ways that Spanish people insult and swear, and talk.
We have such a rich way to express our frustration (‘me cago en la mar’, Spain), our joy (‘me partí polla de risa’, Canary Islands, Spain), our anger (‘la concha de tu hermana’, Uruguay, Argentina). I love the subject, honestly. Every time I teach my students to swear we have such a great time. I intend to deeply research it and interview natives from different countries, and expand my insulting and swearing knowledge into more languages. I intend to write about it and share it with the world. Not only swearing and vulgar insults, but smart, acid insults are also beautiful. Things like ‘if you are planning to keep talking about your boring stuff, please let me know so I can harakiri’. Then I will get famous and publish a book, and finally do what we all want: have passive income. Also, famous writers usually also enjoy a ‘normal’ life, without bothering paparazzi, so I could also be famous. People would recognize my name and say that I pretend to talk several languages but probably is not true. Sponsors will offer me deals and I’ll succumb to corruption for a box of cookies or something else, very cheap.
But truth be told, I am not so stable about my goals. Let’s see what happens. In any case, I will publish ‘cunt’, ‘puta’ and ‘cojones’, in the name of linguistics and I’ll have a little chuckle alone about it.
I plan to make mistakes in every language, but English is not my first language, so please, when you find a mistake, let me know. I don’t want to pay Grammarly.
La Mala Palabra 