Italiano or Castellano?

My Spanish (or Castellano as it’s called here) is mostly Italian, but people are nice enough to let me think I'm speaking to them in Castellano. Today over lunch, Italian was not helping me much.

Lesson 1: It started when I had yet another conversation about therapists—supposedly Buenos Aires has the highest number of psychoanalysts per capita in the world, something like one therapist for every thirty-five porteños. Pretty much everyone thinks I need to get one of my own.

I explained to my friend that I would want a therapist that speaks English and preferably comes from my culture because it would be easier for me to express myself. In Italian, express is esprimere, so I said esprimir. My friend seemed to understand me, but I wasn’t sure.

“Is that how you say it in Castellano?” I asked. She assured me that it was correct but added that it was more something from the Interior and not Buenos Aires and a little different than what I said: “sacar el jugo,” she explained was the appropriate expression.

“Take the juice out? That’s odd,” I thought. Turns out esprimir in Spanish means to juice, as in to juice an orange. But it doesn’t have a thing to do with expressing oneself, or does it?

So what did she think I meant? I need a therapist who speaks English so I can take the juice out. Of what? So I can get to the good stuff? I’m still not sure, but I’ll keep using it to see what reactions I get.

Lesson 2: The second Italian/Castellano mistake was one I’ve made before. Orto in Italian means garden. In Castellano it means butt. I was talking about salad and how salad here is always fresh right from the garden or right from the butt if you make the mistake of saying orto instead of huerto.

Lesson 3: Maybe the best one yet though was about a week ago at dinner with some people I know well and others I barely know at all. They were trying to fix me up with a friend and wanted to know what kind of guy I’m interested in. I said age wasn’t much of an issue but if the guy is older than me he should still be in good shape. I had a date with an older guy that had trouble standing up.

To stand up in Italian is alzarse. Alzarse in Castellano is "to get it up." You can imagine the confusion and the laughs. In the end, it would be good if the guy could do both.

When Shit! isn't Mierda!

I read a friend’s story today about language and life. The story was a hoot. And it brought up a really intriguing point. Is Mierda! ever really Shit!? Can one ever reach the point of feeling another language?

If you speak another language, you’ll know what I mean. You might get the lingo down: tell the offender off nicely (which is the wuss way and typically the one of most beginners to a language), tell him off creatively to earn you a smile (which is not so much telling him off), tell him off elegantly (which means, I’m better than you even when I tell you off I do it with style), tell him off vulgarly (which is the real test: if you can make the offender blush and walk away sheepishly you’ve mastered the language).

But if someone really pisses you off, it just has to be done in your first language. Or does it?

I love to shout out profanities in Italian, especially when I’m driving. “Stronzo” is shorter and more aggressive sounding than “asshole.” When I’m driving, I’m not really emotionally involved with the other dirtbag drivers on the road and they can’t hear me. “Figlio di puttana” is one of those Italian slurs that just doesn’t do it for me. I mean, compare the sound of it to “son of a bitch” and you’ll see why. Are there profanities in some languages that help you let off steam better than their equivalents in other languages?

Audience is another question. When fighting with my Italian boyfriend, he was a “stronzo.” But my Argentinean boyfriend was an “hijo de puta.” To me they mean the same thing. My choice was based on my audience. But I called one an asshole and the other a son of a bitch. And in English, these are quite different and neither mean what I really wanted to say: “mother fucker.” Did these boyfriends ever understand how mad I was? Did they think I was madder than I really was?

But when I’m so angry that I need to curse, I need to do it to feel better, it has to be done in English. Cursing in Italian is light for me. It’s a diversion, a little fun, a play with words. Cursing in Spanish means nothing to me. I feel no release of negativity. The therapeutic effects are lost entirely. In the end, Shit! will never be Mierda!

If I break my toe while I’m walking with a group of Argentines, you’d better believe my head will be saying Shit! while my mouth says Mierda! If you live in another country and everything around you is happening in another language, yet you continue to think, process, and, in essence, experience all of this in your native language, all of your emotions, that is, come to you in your native language, isn’t the rest of it just acting? Can people ever really know who you are if you call them an asshole when you mean to call them a mother fucker?