Friday, November 16, 2012

Hay mucha bulla en la calle

In my last post I shared some of the Dominican Spanish I learned with you and in this post I'm going to pick up where I left off.  None of these words are in any particular order, unless you consider random a form of order.

Now let's get down to business.

So there I was talking with my new Dominican friend, Hector.   The place he took me to was pretty popular, lot's of people hanging out eating, talking with friends, enjoying the music and just having a good time in general.  Then Hector says to me....

Hay mucha bulla en la calle

You probably already know what happened next.  First came the deer in headlights look, and then came my famous question "¿Cómo?"

It turns out that bulla is a synonym for the word ruido, noise.

Hay mucha bulla en la calle
There's a lot of noise in the street

Mi vecino hace mucha bulla
My neighbor makes a lot of noise

Another word I picked up is palomo.  Actually, I already knew about the word palomo.  It means pigeon, but in Dominican slang palomo can be used as a synonym for tonto.  And just in case you don't know, tonto means stupid or dumb, so un tonto is a stupid person.  Tonta for a woman.

Es un palomo
He's an idiot

I don't know what it is about bird related vocabulary, but even the word pájaro (bird) has a different meaning in Dominican slang.

No soy pájara
I'm not a homosexual

Pájaro for a guy.

My friendly hotel bartender taught me that if you want to say somebody is really good at something, you can say they are montro.

Tu eres montro bailando

A quick search in Google also reveals that montro has a few other meanings:

MONTRO  (Mon-Tro):
n. noun.,1. From the word “MONSTRO” meaning Monster.
2. used as “dude” or “man”,
3. Can also be used to describe something cool, or “hot”, as in “ese carro esta Montro!” (That car is hot)
 Example:1. “Dimelo montro!” = “Whats up man!?”

You can find the word montro and more Dominican slang at this site: That's Dominican

Here's a strange word I learned, zafacón.  It means trash can.  It's not slang, it's just the word they use.  I'm accustomed to hearing bote.

No tires basura al piso, echala en el zafacón
Don't throw trash on the floor, throw in the the trash can.

That's it for today.  I've got some more things to share with you about my trip to la República Dominicana, so I'm going to get busy writing those posts as well as some other things I've got pending.

¡Hasta la próxima!

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