Jane Alberdeston is a poet who lives in Norfolk, Virginia, but she’s originally from Puerto Rico, and notes that in the capital of Puerto Rico, San Juan, there’s a famous statue of Christopher Columbus with his finger pointing toward the horizon. In...
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,” but some Spanish...
Grant recommends the children’s book Dreams of Green: A Three Kings’ Day Story written by Mariel Jungkunz and illustrated by Mónica Paola Rodriguez (Bookshop|Amazon), about a girl and her family who move from Puerto Rico to Ohio and find ways to...
Carlos in Augusta, Kentucky, says that in Cuba, when it was raining while the sun was still shining, he used to hear people say la hija del diablo se está casando, or literally, “the devil’s daughter is getting married.” A friend from Alabama told...
Duane, who lives in New York City, says that his parents who are from the U.S. Virgin Islands use the term corotole to mean “clutter.” This term appears in The Virgin Islands Dictionary by Kareem Nelson-Hull (Bookshop|Amazon). It also appears in the...
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...
