Tony Deyal column – Tony Habla Toro

Jun 23, 2008 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

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The lady looked Spanish. There are a lot of people from Santo Domingo (what do you call them?  Santo Domingonians?) here in Antigua, and many do not speak English. She looked tired, and she faced a long walk to the nearest bus stop.  I wanted to offer her a lift but remembered the fate of my first cousin, Roy, aka Father Gregory, of the Mustard Seed Community.

As one of the Brothers of the Poor, and later, when he set up his own mission in the heart of old Kingston, Roy faced many terrors, including the murder of some of his fellow priests. He not just survived, but thrived in the environment as culturally distant from his home town of Carapichaima, a little sugar-cane village in Central Trinidad, as reggae is from chutney music. 

Having left Jamaica to visit his father in Trinidad, Roy was driving on the Lady Young Road from Port-of-Spain to Morvant, a short distance but mountainous and difficult for anyone without transportation. 

Being a kind-hearted soul, and believing that his Jamaican experience had made him street-wise enough to survive anything Trinidad could offer, Roy gave a young lady a lift, she having looked lost and lonely and it was late.  She mugged him. 

The lady from Santo Domingo was old, so I did not expect any problem, until I pointed in the direction we were going and looked at her questioningly. She seemed taken aback at either my kindness or my boldness. I thought rapidly about my next move. 

Should I ask her if she wanted a lift?  I know “¿quiere vd?” but was not sure what came next.  “Un ascensor,” or is that an elevator?  What about a ride?  “Bicycleta” is bicycle, and “caballo” is horse.

I was driving a big Mitsubishi Pajero and had to be ultra careful. Mitsubishi had got itself in trouble in Latin America with that name.  “Pajero” can mean “masturbator,” and after some flak they changed the name to “Montero” in the Spanish-speaking countries and left it as it was in the English-speaking Caribbean, figuring either that we would not catch on or care, or that it was so appropriate we would take it in stride or in hand or whatever.

Should I ask her, “Quiere un caballero?”  That is a rider and not a ride, a horseman and not a horse.  Worse, she might think that I was offering myself to her for transport and not transportation.  I eventually found out from a Spanish phrase book that I could have said, “¿Quieres que te lleve al centro?” which means, “Do you want a ride into town?”  However, I was not going to town, I was heading up the hill towards my home in the countryside.  What is “up the road”?  Something “camino” but “up” is “alta” or is that “high”?

Am I a “campesion” or a “caballero”?  What if I asked her, “¿Vaya mi via?”  This might be “Going my way?” but would she regard it as friendly or flirtatious?  Do I start guantanameraing with, “Yo soy un hombre sincero…”

The one thing in my favour is that, whatever mistakes I made, I would have been sinning in not just good company, but very rich ones.  Brand names in Spanish can be devastating.  Robo Carwash is an international franchise.  In Latin America “Robo” means “robber” and is worse than “ladron,” or thief, and “bandido,” or bandit. 

Colgate, the toothpaste people, did not know that in Argentina the combination of “col” (neck) and “gate” (pronounced “gah-tay”) means “Go hang yourself.”  Braniff Airline switched to leather seats and it wanted to use the comfort and feel of leather as a gimmick to get people to use its services. 

The Spanish phrase it selected:  “viajar en cuero,” really means to travel naked.  Continental Airlines was so proud of its logo and acronym “CA” that it repeated it along the length of its silverware.  What its passengers read was “CACA” or baby talk for “excrement” both in Latin America and some Caribbean countries. Filthy Yankees!

There are some other companies that ventured into the unknown and ended up with huevos on their caras.  In 2003, Coors was the third largest beer producer in the US and the second biggest in the UK.

When they went into the Latin American market, they thought they would keep their very successful “Turn It Loose” advertising and just translate it into Spanish.  It became, “Get Diarrhoea”. 

So what about the lady and the lift? Or, as we say in Trinidad, “drop”? We ask, “Can you give me a drop?”  Should I lift her or drop her?  Levantar, alzar or elevar?  Gota, buzon, solta, cesar?  I rendered unto cesar the things that are Caesar’s and decided to drop the whole Spanglish bit right there. 

Bat in your crease, I thought to myself.  Bato in your creaso? Bata en su creasa?  Is there any Spanish equivalent to the “crease” in cricket, as opposed to the one on the trousers of a caballero or a flamboyant bandido?    

I figured I should stick to the words I know, like “No,” which I can say with equal facility in both English and Spanish.  However, when it comes to Spanish, I should watch my Ps and Qs.  Do you know that out of the water a fish is a “pesca” and in the water it is “un pez”, but “una peza” is pitch or tar?

Then you have “pesos,” meaning “money”, “pesadez” when you’re tired, “pesar” to grieve, “pesado,” meaning heavy, and the whole thing becomes a “pesadilla,” or nightmare.  “Quebrada” is a brook, “quebrado” is a fraction or bankrupt, “quebrar” is to break, and do I make sense of all this?  Quizá (perhaps) or maybe I should take a quebrar.

*Tony Deyal was last seen laughing at the chicken magnate Frank Purdue, whose self-serving ad, “It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken” became “It takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate.”

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