If the number of guiris making strange hand gestures in Spain seems to rise a lot this summer then it's probably the fault of The Guardian. Teaching foreigners to use native hand gestures seems like a dangerous game to play, in the same way as Spaniards using their fingers to ask for two beers in an English pub. Over at El País they don't seem too impressed with the selection. The phrase "estoy a dos velas" and its accompanying gesture is completely new to me. Also, I have never heard anyone in Spain using "huevón", although I've come across it in South America. The commenters in El País seem to think that it could be common in Andalucia too. Doing a quick Google check on its usage I came across the Wikipedia page on Spanish profanity. I like the redirection advice at the top of that page about Joder, Nebraska!
8 comments:
It's rather surprising for the Guardian to drop a massive clanger like this. You'd expect this kind of patronising nonsense, endowed with a fair whiff of more or less conscious xenophobia, to appear in the likes of the Daily Mail.
“Estoy a dos velas”:
I was born in the Barcelona metropolitan area and this expression is quite common amongst the immigration from Andalucía and Extremadura. I have heard it many times and it is now mainstream.
@Rab - The comments I saw on El País suggested that Andalucia might have been the origin for the expressions used.
@Judith - Do you really think it's that bad? I may be wrong but I can't imagine the Daily Mail doing anything to encourage their readers to speak a foreign language - shout loudly in English would probably be their recommendation.
I was recently asked to write a similar piece for an American travel mag about confusing gestures around the world. I asked my 100% Extremeñan wife if there were any gestures she could think of and the only one she could come up with was the 'dos velas', though I have never seen her nor anyone else do it. Maybe a true sign of economic recovery?
"a true sign of economic recovery"
Troy, I think your optimism makes you a deserved winner of this week's South of Watford Brotes Verdes award. Congratulations.
Perhaps I'm reading too much into this. However, besides the sheer uselessness of teaching arcane gestures to otherwise absolute beginners, for a great deal of Guardian or Daily Mail readers the obvious upshot of this story is still that age-old imperial wisdom, like it or not: 'the only way for a greasy dago to ever learn to speak proper English is by getting his hands firmly tied behind his back'
Troy and co,
Apologies if I am explaining the bleedin’ obvious but when someone (typically a man) says that “estoy a dos velas”, more often than not it means that he has not enjoyed any canoodling for a while.
Its secondary meaning is “I have no money” but it is not as common in my experience. For the latter, most people would say something along the lines of “estoy pelao” or “no tengo un duro”. I wonder if the latter is now out of use with the euro -I left before the euro was introduced.
What's a candle -or was it a sail?- got to do with not getting laid, I wonder?
I'm grateful for any help and advice Rab and other readers of this blog can provide.
Candles or sails is the last thing I'd have expected, honestly, but then again...
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