What English-speakers call speed bumps or sleeping policemen go by different names in various parts of the Spanish-speaking world. In Argentina, traffic is slowed by lomos de burro, or “burro’s backs.” In Puerto Rico that bump in the road is a muerto, or “dead person.” In Mexico, those things are called topes, a word that’s probably onomatopoetic. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Spanish-Language Speed Bumps”
Not long ago, I was in Mexico for the Writers’ Conference in San Miguel de Allende.
And I had an interesting conversation with my taxi driver about speed bumps.
Now, he had grown up there in the middle of Mexico and used the word tope, which means speed bump.
It’s onomatopoetic. It has to do with the sound of something hitting something.
So, you know, you watch out for the topes.
We got to talking about how, depending on the kind of Spanish you speak, there are different words for speed bumps.
For example, in Argentina, the term is lomo de burro, which means the back of the burro, because it looks like the rounded back of a burro.
My taxi driver was telling me that he had this funny experience where he had a passenger from Puerto Rico.
And in Puerto Rico, they say muerto, or a dead person.
Oh, dead person.
Yeah.
It looks like the mound of a grave.
Right, exactly.
And so the taxi driver was driving along, and his passenger said, oh, look out for the muerto in the middle of the road.
And the taxi driver was swerving to avoid this dead body in the middle of the road.
And I thought that was really fascinating that there’s so many different terms for speed bump.
Yeah, where is it in the English-speaking world that they say sleeping policeman?
Right, sleeping policeman, often in Britain, and silent policeman.
Silent policeman, right?
Yeah.
We’d love to hear your encounters with different words in different languages, 877-929-9673,
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