Inspired by our conversation about the language of leave-taking and the Southern expression Y’all come go home with us, Claire in Durham, North Carolina, calls to reminisce about her experience as a teenager in Mexico and the extended good-byes among friends and family there. She has fond memories of them all singing “No Me Amenaces,” which translates as “Don’t Threaten Me.” Popularized by Jose Alfredo Jimenez, this mournful breakup song addresses a lover who threatens to leave and break the singer’s heart but never quite gets around to doing so. The song goes in part te vas y te vas y te vas y te vas y te vas y no te has ido which means “you are leaving, and you are leaving, and you are leaving, and you are leaving, and you are leaving, and you are leaving, and you are leaving, and you have not left.” This is part of a complete episode.
More from this show
Two words from the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee prep materials: avahi, a term for a woolly lemur of Madagascar, and saltigrade, which describes spiders and other creatures that have feet and limbs adapted for leaping. Saltigrade is...
Louie from Black Hills, South Dakota, recalls the time his girlfriend fell off a paddleboard and into a lake, at which point his father declared She bit the farm! This peculiar locution is most likely his dad’s own combination of two...