Leonor from Dallas, Texas, says that when she was a child, her Spanish-speaking mother and grandmother used to her after a bump or scrape with Sana, sana, colita de rana, Si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana , literally, “Heal, heal, little frog’s tail. If you don’t heal today, you’ll heal tomorrow.” Somehow this always helped distract her from any minor pain. There are many versions of this saying throughout Latin America. Another ends with Dame un besito para hoy y mañana , or “Give me a kiss for today and tomorrow.” Around the world, similarly soothing phrases are often accompanied with a bit of touch or gentle massage, which works at least as well as the words themselves. This is part of a complete episode.
Why do some Spanish speakers use adaptations of certain English terms when there’s already a perfectly good word for the same thing in Spanish? Sometimes the result is called “Spanglish.” For example, Spanish cuentas means “bills,”...
We’ve previously discussed when pigs fly and other idioms expressing profound skepticism that something will occur. That prompted an email from Guillermo in Tucson, Arizona, who shared a Spanish phrase that conveys a similar idea: cuando la...
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