A few silly ropa (or lack thereof) words for today, and a progress report on my Spanish vocabulary studies…
la hebilla — buckle (e.g. a belt buckle). But (I think) you can also use it colloquially to say something like this… Tiene belleza y encanto, ama animales peludos y sabe dar coba; no falta hebilla para ser un gran éxito en Hollywood. — He’s got looks and charm, he loves furry animals and knows how to suck up; in short, everything he needs to be a huge success in Hollywood. (And I mean everything, including a nice shiny buckle to dazzle the studio execs, who, like raccoons and ravens, love shiny things. Belt buckles have long been a key weapon in successful actors’ Hollywood-invading arsenals. Just ask Gov. Arnold, Ronald Reagan or John Wayne.)
la manga — sleeve. Not to be confused with the bambi-eyed Japanese comics of the same name. Also not to be confused with la mancha, which is a stain. It’s also the comunidad autónoma (think “province”) at the very centre of Spain (it’s capital is Toledo). Remember where Don Quijote was from? Yep, he was from “The Stain”. Now, it may not seem like the nicest name but apparently manxa means “parched earth” in Arabic. Oh, yeah — that’s so much nicer. Right up there in romantic value with Extremely Hard (Extremadura), the region just to the west of The Stain.
desnudo/a — naked. The related verb desnudar is to undress. Woo hoo! (Yes, how juvenile!) The unintuitive thing is that el nudo de la amistad isn’t referring those close friendships that naturists seem to form; it simply means “the ties of friendship”. That’s because nudo means knot. (Kno, it does knot mean nude.) In fact, it’s desnudo — strangely for us English-speakers — that means nude. If I continued being juvenile I might look for other not-so-tenuous connections between knots and nudity…but I believe the Internet already has plenty of that for you to discover under your own initiative.
Well, today I finished off el capítulo sobre la ropa — onwards and upwards! (Newcomers can learn more about my approach in this post) Here’s my latest progress report:
Category |
Words |
Done |
Start |
Days |
Avg./day |
| El cuerpo humano | 148 | Yes | Sept. 10 (2005) | 12 | 12.3 |
| En familia | 86 | Yes | Sept. 22 | 11 | 7.8 |
| Los viajes | 139 | Yes | Oct. 3 | 21 | 6.6 |
| Los alimentos | 310 | Yes | Oct. 24 | 64 | 4.8 |
| La vivienda | 191 | Yes | Dec. 27 | 24 | 8.0 |
| La ciudad | 135 | Yes | Jan. 20 (2006) | 15 | 9.0 |
| La ropa | 157 | Yes | Feb. 4 | 21 | 7.5 |
| TOTAL (hasta ahora) | 1166 | 167 | 7.0 |
In the next capítulo, I’ll be studying a good Canadian topic, eh? It’s El tiempo y la tierra. Here, tiempo doesn’t mean “time”; it means the weather! And we Canadians love our weather…talking about it, at least. Al mejor tiempo, pasamos mucho tiempo hablando del tiempo.