Margaret from Denton, Texas, says that during her many years in northern New Mexico she noticed that residents with Latino roots often used the phrase landed up instead of ended up, and get down off the car rather than get out of the car. The latter is simply a calque from the Spanish word bajar, meaning “to descend” or “to lower.” The phrase landed up, on the other hand, is not at all limited to New Mexico. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Landed Up vs. Ended Up; Get Down From a Car”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, I’m Margaret Young from Denton, Texas.
Hey, Margaret.
What’s up?
Okay, so I spent about 22 years in northern New Mexico. I worked for a university there in Las Vegas, New Mexico. And when I was working there, there’s three cities in northern New Mexico. There’s Santa Fe, Las Vegas, and Taos, and it forms kind of a triangle. And within that triangle, there are people there who speak Spanish or they grew up speaking Spanish but now speak English. And so when they speak, you know, when we’re talking to them about everyday things, oftentimes they’ll say something like, oh, you know, I was going to go visit Joe last night, but I landed up visiting Sue instead. So instead of using what we would normally hear somebody say, like I ended up going to here or there, they used the term landed. And it’s pretty universal for people that grew up and live in that area. It’s very common for the local people to say that.
Another thing they say is they’ll say, well, you know, let’s go. I need to get down off the car instead of saying I want to get out of the car. And so those are two things that come to mind that I hear on a regular basis. And I just wondered if this is something that’s just specific to northern New Mexico.
So it seems to me that it might have something to do with sort of their ancestry and the fact that a lot of folks who live up there are descended from over time. Some of them are even descended from some of the conquistadors that came up through the south, you know, through Mexico and ended up in the Santa Fe area.
Yeah, there’s something to the heritage story there. It’s just really about the language. To deal with the car one first, just to be clear, they’re not climbing down off the hood of their Camaro when they’re talking about getting down off the car, right? They’re opening the door and getting out of the seats.
Yes.
Yes, they are.
Yeah.
And do you ever spend any time in Louisiana?
No, I never have.
The reason I ask is because this happens actually in Louisiana as well, where they talked about getting down off a car or down out of a car, because both French and Spanish have a verb, which directly translates into English as to get down off of or to come down out of a thing. So in Spanish, you might say, bahar del carro or bahar del coche, meaning get down out of the car. And in French, the verb is desandre, which means to get down out of. And so this expression is what we call a calque, C-A-L-Q-U-E. It’s a literal word-for-word translation from language A into language B.
It is, I do know that it exists very commonly in the Southwest in places that have a Spanish-speaking heritage. So it’s more about the language heritage than the cultural heritage. And it also exists in Louisiana independently, and they came up separately.
As for the other one, landed up in, I know that New Mexicans often talk about as a landed up in, meaning to end up in a place as if it’s theirs. But it’s actually very widespread. It’s common throughout the United Kingdom. It’s used here and there throughout the United States. It might be a little more common in New Mexico, but it isn’t particularly New Mexican at all to say landed up in. And this is a mix, obviously, of to end up in a place or to land in a place, meaning to arrive in a place.
So more than likely it keeps being reinvented. It’s a really, I could see that happening over and over again. And it might become fixed in the local language. You’ll find it in Irish novels. You’ll find it in BBC commenters talking about it. You’ll find it in forum threads from Australia. So it’s not just that one part of the English-speaking world.
I can almost picture somebody landing up on shore, you know, washing up on shore like that. But it’s also logical to land up at a place, right?
Right.
To mean that you, that’s where you fixed your flag, right? You landed, you ended up there.
Yeah, I landed, yeah, I landed somewhere. But, you know, it’s just, for me anyway, I had never heard it before. So it was just, it was kind of unique to the people that I knew in northern New Mexico.
Well, like I said, I think it might be a little more common there. And I know they certainly, when you see a list of New Mexican slang that people have put together, it sometimes shows up on those lists. So they do believe that it’s theirs, and sometimes that’s enough to make it a local thing.
Thank you. I didn’t know there was a list of New Mexican slang.
Oh, yeah. Google it, New Mexican slang. You’ll find wonderful things out there. Also look for burqueño slang, the slang of Albuquerque.
Oh, yeah, from Albuquerque.
All right. Margaret, thank you so much for calling.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Take care. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
So the landed up isn’t from Spanish, for example.
No, the landed up isn’t from Spanish. The landed up is just a normal mixing of two idioms in English to come up with a new one.
And by the way, if you want to learn some more of that burqueño slang, just look for it on our website. If there’s a word or phrase that’s puzzled you, we’d love to hear about it. You can call us at 877-929-9673 or send your questions and comments in email to words@waywordradio.org.
