Gus Lozada, meet our prince (King to be)...

[boosh]

Son of our Queen who did a speech in Mexico and fucked it up brilliantly,...

[SYN]

Translation?

[boosh]

Well he tried to say "A shrimp that sleeps will be washed away by the tide" or something like that,...

Instead he said : "A shrimp that sleeps is a M@ttaF%cker"

I think Gus knows exactly what he said,...

[flatfinger]

Leave the ~ of the top of the n when you address mr.Pena ;
He will be honored.


:-)

[Gus Lozada]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHA



OH BOY !!!!



The saying goes like this:

"A shrimp who falls asleep, is taken away by the tide"
( Camarón que se duerme, se lo lleva la corriente )

That means, you should stay always focused in whatever opportunity you have and never miss a chance.


... then, that asshole said:

"A shrimp who falls asleep, is fucked off"
(Camarón que se duerme, se lo lleva la chingada)

... where, of course, "chingada" is really not something you may expect from a prince's official speech.
What an asshole !!!

[veracohr]

How does one mess that up? Someone must have been fucking with him.

[boosh]

Originally Posted by veracohr

How does one mess that up? Someone must have been fucking with him.

Well this was the official explanation :

"His wife is Argentinian and she checked the speech in the morning. It was written by a spanish Speaking person. It seems that in every other Spanish Speaking country ,chingada is a totally normal word except in Mexico where it has a very nasty meaning. So it was just bad luck I guess - If he did the same speech in any other country no-one would have laughed."

[Gus Lozada]

Originally Posted by boosh

Well this was the official explanation :

"His wife is Argentinian and she checked the speech in the morning. It was written by a spanish Speaking person. It seems that in every other Spanish Speaking country ,chingada is a totally normal word except in Mexico where it has a very nasty meaning. So it was just bad luck I guess - If he did the same speech in any other country no-one would have laughed."

Nope, that is totally bullshit and as ignorant as when the average idiot refers to every single latin american citizen born south of the US border, as "a mexican".


They don't use "chingada" at all in Argentina. Not an unknown word, but totally unused. And that word is, in latin america -where we use the word- as understandable as "fuck" is in English.

On the other hand, if their official explanation was true -which it isn't-, they should have considered that the speech was in Mexico, for God's sake! You can NOT go to Argentina, as an example, and make a President say "pelotudo" to someone, without provoking a huge reaction.

So, again, that is bullshit. His translator / speech writer should be fired for making the Prince look like a real idiot.

If that's proper diplomacy, then I'm an English gentleman.

[Gus Lozada]

Originally Posted by veracohr

Someone must have been fucking with him.

A nice part of "teaching" Spanish to a foreign friend is making him/her to use some of those words in public so, I guess that's what happened here.

[veracohr]

Originally Posted by Gus Lozada

A nice part of "teaching" Spanish to a foreign friend is making him/her to use some of those words in public so, I guess that's what happened here.

A coworker of mine is quitting and moving overseas next month to teach English. Interesting possibilities there...

[rasputin1963]

The verb chingar literally means to fuck, but it has shades of meaning, just as fuck does in English.

It can mean oblivion, as it can in English, such as in the phrases:

Fuck you!
Fuck off!
Go get fucked!
Go fuck yourself!

All of which mean "Go to oblivion!". "May you go to a place where we all might forget you exist!"

In Spanish, they will sometimes say, "¡Vete a la chingada!" which is a much stronger version of "Go to oblivion!" or "Get lost!".

Chingar is always a profane word, and frankly, as Gus points out above, an important head of state probably has no business using it in public like this, even for comic effect... Not sure what possessed him. A wicked Dutch or Mexican scriptwriter, perhaps? I'm convinced, re-watching this clip, that this was not a slip of the tongue: the Dutch prince knew exactly what he was saying, and the effect it would have. Only at a stag roast of some kind would this phrase really have been at home.

Say, as a ribald version of the American phrase: "You snooze, you lose."

This incident reminds me of the gaffe Gee-Dub Bush made when he was addressing a huge crowd in Mexico during the Fox regime: He was trying to suggest that the USA and Mexico should remain fast friends and allies.

He wanted to cap off his speech with a rousing: "Juntos, podemos." (Together, we can.)

Instead, he uttered: "Juntos pedemos." (Together, we fart.)

[spokenward]

The last time the Dutch had this much trouble with their Spanish it lasted 80 years.

[Gus Lozada]

Hi Ras!

Originally Posted by rasputin1963

All of which mean "Go to oblivion!". "May you go to a place where we all might forget you exist!"

In Spanish, they will sometimes say, "¡Vete a la chingada!" which is a much stronger version of "Go to oblivion!" or "Get lost!".

That is correct!
Just as a side note, in the likes American people may say "fuck off" without it being really harsh, we can use "A la chingada" on a daily, common basis, but:

Originally Posted by rasputin1963

Chingar is always a profane word, and frankly, as Gus points out above, an important head of state probably has no business using it in public like this, even for comic effect...

My point, exactly.

Originally Posted by rasputin1963

Say, as a ribald version of the American phrase: "You snooze, you lose."

Oh, thanks for bringing a good example. That is the meaning of "Camarón que se duerme...", indeed.

Originally Posted by rasputin1963

This incident reminds me of the gaffe Gee-Dub Bush made when he was addressing a huge crowd in Mexico during the Fox regime: He was trying to suggest that the USA and Mexico should remain fast friends and allies.

He wanted to cap off his speech with a rousing: "Juntos, podemos." (Together, we can.)

Instead, he uttered: "Juntos pedemos." (Together, we fart.)

Not defending Bush -God forbids!- but at least, that was:

- Product of a mispronunciation (not a big deal coming from a foreigner)

- "Pedemos" could be interpreted as you mentioned but only if you really want to find something funny there. To really mean "we fart together" he should have said "juntos nos pedorreamos" which clearly, was not what he said.


... but this Prince dude ...

[Beck]

The parochial school my sons attend has several South Korean students. A couple years ago one of the captains on my son's soccer team asked one of the Koreans how to say, "Good game" in Korean. After the game, which they won, he went around and high-fived the 5 or 6 Korean players saying what he thought was "Good game." He got strange looks and a couple chuckles. Turned out he was saying “Fuck you” in Korean.

Gotta be careful whom you ask.

Originally Posted by spokenward

The last time the Dutch had this much trouble with their Spanish it lasted 80 years.

[rasputin1963]

When I was in South Africa, one of my fellow students suggested I go up and greet our prim female teacher with, "How do you do, Miss?" in Afrikaans.

What they told me to say was : "Gaan kaak in die mielies."

Which I later discovered means: "Go shit in the cornfield." , a common Afrikaans insult.

[tradivoro1]

Definitely, somebody must have set that guy up... There's no way in Mexico that "se lo lleva la chingada" means anything but something very crass... It's also very funny hearing the audience's reaction...

[boosh]

Well I can speak only 3 words in Spanish and reading what Gus said about it made me wonder. There is a strong opposition overhere and lots of people want to get rid of our princes and Queen because they cost a gazzilion $$ each year and what good do they do?

I think this is staged and someone wrote him a speech to make him look bad,... I don't believe his wife read the speech because she should have known.

His wife by the way is a daughter of an argentinian minister who was minister of agriculture during that bad regime they had overthere,.... His name is Videla or something like that. He was not allowed to be at their wedding here because of his past.

[boosh]

Originally Posted by spokenward

The last time the Dutch had this much trouble with their Spanish it lasted 80 years.

The guy in that wiki article is the great-grandfather of our prince,...........

Cool,....now we are on the verge of war with spanish speaking people all over again,...

Hmmmm,....well if they're all the size of Gus we can manage I think,...unless they decide to run though our legs and headbud our balls ,... ;-)

Love ya Guzzy!!

[rasputin1963]

@ Gus Lozada:


Just out of curiosity, Gus, when you need to type in Spanish on the computer, how do you produce your Spanish characters?

Like the accents, the tilde, the inverted exclamation point and question mark, etc.?

Is your keyboard mapped to produce Spanish characters.... Or do you have to manually enter them using the little Windows utility, or maybe you are typing in keystroke-shortcuts?

[UstadKhanAli]

Originally Posted by rasputin1963

Is your keyboard mapped to produce Spanish characters....

This.