La Puta Palabra del Día — or how to really get immersed into a new culture
Two years ago, I had the opportunity to make an office exchange and work for a few months from Madrid. I had been working for 6 months in Ecuador in the past and was therefore fluent in Spanish. At least so I thought. Until I discovered that my polished language skills would be of little use if I wanted to make friends with my nuevos colleagues.
Me he descojonado (yes, it does come from “cojones”)
Why? Well, I don’t know about other cities but in Madrid, Spaniards tend to use a lot of slang and dirty vocabulary in private conversations. And when I say private, I mean between colleagues or even with your boss. I would have absolutely no trouble to understand business conversations but was totally out when it came to jokes and personal stories. Damn it. In Ecuador they hardly were using any bad word. You’d be fine with knowing just three or four of them.
What to do? To survive in this jungle I had to find a bad-word mentor. So I turned to one of my young know-it-all colleagues. You know, the kind that explains everything to everyone (in a nice way). “Por favor, can you teach me the Puta Palabra del Día?” At first, he gave me a strange look. But once I had clarified my intentions, he agreed, and gave me my first lesson.
The F-word of the day
Every day, I consistently asked for my F-word of the day. My colleague would give me a word, explain its meaning and give me two or three examples of how to use it. Then, I would make one or two sentences myself. Most of the time I would play a joke on another colleague, and all the team would start laughing. It worked incredibly well.
Not only did I start understanding jokes and private conversations. People were happy to see how commited I was to integrating into the local team and culture. As if I were planning on staying forever.
Pablo para el futuro
It so happens that I just came back to Madrid for a few days. And tonight I am going to meet my colorful friends again. Unfortunately, my puta vocabulary notes went lost somewhere. I would have loved to be able to review them quickly before our event this evening. Only two or three words remained from the thirty or so I had memorized back then. But this trip to Madrid will be different. I just came back from Bucharest with a new app: Pablo. It was made for this exact reason. I know where to keep my puta lists in the future now ;)
