PG17: How to cuss politely in various Spanish-speaking countries

For any of my Spanish speaking friends, I apologize for the bad words that will appear in this blog post. But there are differences in the grossness of particular expressions from one country to another, which might be educational and useful.

A simple example is the word mierda, or shit. Argentinians tend to use this word casually in conversation. For them, it's vulgar, but not too bad. If something is no good, it's "una mierda". However, in Bolivia, when I dropped this word into conversation, I was told it was considered the height of vulgarity. I was warned not to use it casually.

In Mexico, where I lived for several years, men refer to jerks and assholes as cabrones, the literal meaning of which is cuckolds (for any young Americans reading this, a cuckold is a man whose wife sleeps around behind his back). It's definitely an insult, but Mexican men also use this word quite casually among friends, as we might use "pal" or "buddy" or, among the young, "bro". However, here in Spain, when I used it once in conversation, my friends reacted visibly. They said cabrón is extremely vulgar and insulting here, more so than in Mexico. Be careful with it.

The Chingonary.

The true artists and poets of cursing are Mexicans. Their creativity in expression knows no bounds. It takes an entire book to list and explain all the expressions derived from the word chingar, the rough equivalent of our f-word in English. The book is called (translated) The Chingonary: Dictionary of the use, reuse and abuse of chingar and its derivatives. Some friends in Mexico, knowing my interest in language and cuss words, gave me the book as a present. (Incidentally, in other Spanish-speaking countries, chingar means simply to bother or annoy; it is not considered vulgar at all.)

The poet and philosopher Octavio Paz devoted several pages of his book about Mexican identity, The Labyrinth of Solitude, explaining the deep cultural and historical context of chingar. It is best captured in an idea I heard expressed various ways: "o el chingado o el chingón". You're either screwed or the one doing the screwing.

A Mexican journalist in one of my classes at the digital journalism center in Guadalajara gave me the compliment of saying the course was muy chingón. A chingón is, roughly translated, "a bad mother-fucker", so in this context, it means the course was really good.

As it happens, chingar's historical, cultural, and linguistic context is closely related to the other word that Mexicans use to curse and describe the universe, namely madre, or mother. There are also entire books on the subject of Mexican concepts of mother, including several chapters of Paz's aforementioned book.

Mexican concepts of mother range from the Virgin of Guadalupe (divine, powerful, wise, generous, beneficent) to the Malinche, the native woman who aided the Spanish conqueror Cortés and bore his son (therefore devious, traitorous, evil, and mother of all downtrodden Mexicans). Mexicans' use of the word echoes in may ways the historical and social context of "mother-fucker" for American blacks--a ruling class and race taking advantage of their mothers. 

By the way, a German philogist, writing in Spanish, has explored the differences in word taboos, including madre, in various Spanish-speaking countries in this essay.

"At full mother"

I've been away from Mexico for several years, so I was recently unsure of how to use a particular phrase using madre --did it mean something was good or bad?-- so I consulted the reader discussion forum on the use of "madre" in Wordreference.com. What I learned once again was that Mexicans' use of expressions containing madre is a complicated subject. According to experts in the forum:

• Estar de poca madre (literally, to be not very mother-like), usually means "it's very good", but, depending on your tone, it can mean "it's very bad". This was the one I had doubts about. Easy to see why.
• A toda madre (literally, at full mother) means "really good". Me fue a toda madre, "It went great for me."
• Valió madre (literally, it was worth mother), means it was worthless. 
• Anda todo madreado (literally, it's going mother-like), means "it's going really bad". 
• Estoy hasta la madre (literally, I'm at the limit of mother) means, "I've had it", "I'm up to here with it", "I'm sick of it". 
• Dar algo en la madre (literally, to put something on the mother), means to throw it away, get rid of it, destroy it. 
• Te pongo en la madre (literally, to put you on mother) means "I'm going to give you what for" or "I'm going to bust you one". 

So being "madre" in Mexico often means something bad in the extreme, unless it means the opposite. No wonder they need a forum to explain this to people from Spain, Venezuela, Argentina, and other parts of the world.

There is no ambiguity I know of around the expression estar padre, to be father-like. Which means good. (Although in the word forum, a young person said this expression is used only by old people. Say, over 30.) It is also common to hear someone say something is padrísimo, or really really good.

(Oops! I wrote about this a few years ago: Cussing and slang in Mexico is all about Mom)

"I obscenity in the milk of their engines"

Caganer in official Barcelona Nativity scene.

In Spain, they use different words to express their joy and frustration with life. Among them are cagar, to shit, and leche, milk. I have heard people here say "I shit in the milk of those jerks." In Hemingway's novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls", the Republican partisans fighting against Franco use the expression frequently. One of them sees the enemy planes overhead and says, "I obscenity in the milk of their engines." For America's squeamish audiences, the publisher replaced "shit" with "obscenity" throughout the novel. Another cultural difference.

Every day I hear people say, es la leche!, it's the milk! to describe something or an event that was really good. And if something is bad, it's mala leche, it's bad milk.

The Australian art critic Robert Hughes, in his 1992 book, Barcelona, about the city's art, history, language, and culture, described what he saw as the local obsession with bodily excretions, in particular milk and shit. He described how it is a tradition to include in Nativity scenes a character known as el caganer, "the shitter" or "the crapper". Why? It's complicated.

Ho . . . 
Enough of that . . . stuff. Here in Pamplona, the preferred exclamation is joder, or the f-word, pronounced in English ho-DARE. But in polite conversation, people will often say just the first syllable, ¡ho!, with a very heavy glottal sound, almost like clearing the throat.

In our informal daily coffee klatches, my colleagues, including the women, have no problem saying joder to punctuate their stories to convey surprise, shock, or disappointment. But somehow if I ever use this word, it seems to produce a kind of shock, a negative one.

I can't curse here except in my own language. It gives me a kind of visceral, physical pleasure to say, "That's bullshit." No Spanish word approximates the many and varied meanings this word can have, nor the emotional impact and satisfaction it can evoke when uttered with conviction. The Brits have a good equivalent for bullshit: "That's bollocks," a word that literally means testicles. However, "It's the dog's bollocks" means really really good. Go figure.

Related:

Life and death in a Spanish village
In Pamplona, they party like it's 1591 20,000-year-old cave art and the north coast of Spain
Barcelona's art and architecture make it a favorite
Cordoba's main attraction: mix of Jewish, Moorish, Christian cultures  
Basque language has mysterious origins