{"id":5859,"date":"2012-10-28T06:56:21","date_gmt":"2012-10-28T10:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/?p=5859"},"modified":"2012-10-28T06:56:21","modified_gmt":"2012-10-28T10:56:21","slug":"what-do-we-mean-by-bicho-in-spanish-chris-stewart%c2%b4s-definition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/what-do-we-mean-by-bicho-in-spanish-chris-stewart%c2%b4s-definition\/","title":{"rendered":"What do we mean by “bicho” in Spanish? Chris Stewart\u00b4s definition."},"content":{"rendered":"

For me as a teacher, it is very interesting to know what are the difficulties people have when learning Spanish, and what are their impressions about our language and culture. That is probably the reason why I\u2019m enjoying so much the book I\u2019m reading now: \u201cA Parrot in the Pepper Tree\u201d, after reading \u201cDriving over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalusia\u201d, by Chris Stewart.<\/p>\n

Both of them relate the author\u2019s personal experiences living in a country state in the south of Spain, \u201cEl Valero\u201d in the Alpujarra, with the company of his wife Ana, his daughter Chloe, and a lot of dogs, cats, a flock of sheep, and a misanthropist parrot. You can imagine all the different situations and anecdotes experienced by an English guy, original drummer of Genesis, who spent some years working in a circus, travelled from place to place shearing sheep and writing tourist guides, and who ended up living in a sometimes rustic far off place.<\/p>\n

In the chapter I\u2019m reading now, Ethic and anticlericalism, Chris (or Cristobal as he is known by his alpujarre\u00f1o neighbours) is dealing with two different matters: to prevent badgers from destroying his growing, and to write a letter in Spanish for his daughter\u2019s school bus driver. His thoughts are worth sharing, and maybe you feel motivated to read the whole book after that!<\/p>\n

\u201cAunque quiero pensar que mi vocabulario espa\u00f1ol ya ha aumentado lo suficiente para ajustarse a la mayor parte de las necesidades de la vida en Las Alpujarras, he descubierto que a cada momento me topo con… bien, con una snare<\/em>– una trampa.<\/p>\n

Los animales, en particular, suponen un mar de incertidumbres (uncertainty<\/strong>). \u201cComadreja\u201d (weasel<\/strong>), \u201cgardu\u00f1a\u201d (marten<\/strong>), \u201cjineta\u201d (civet cat<\/strong>), \u201cgato clavo\u201d (lynx<\/strong>), \u201chur\u00f3n\u201d(ferret<\/strong>), son todos ellos nombres de animales que existen en un \u00e1mbito de identidades inciertas, y que a menudo se distinguen solo por el tama\u00f1o del agujero (hole<\/strong>) por el que pueden pasar para llev\u00e1rsete las gallinas (hens<\/strong>). Estoy convencido de que existen confusiones parecidas con sus equivalentes en ingl\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

Despu\u00e9s, si bajas otro escal\u00f3n en la escala de animales amenazadores (vermin<\/strong>) llegas al todav\u00eda m\u00e1s interesante territorio ling\u00fc\u00edstico de los \u201cbichos (bugs<\/strong>, critters<\/strong>). Pues bien, \u201cbicho\u201d es una de mis palabras espa\u00f1olas favoritas. En general se refiere a una categor\u00eda de animales aproximadamente del tama\u00f1o de los insectos (como cuando se dice, por ejemplo, \u201cen esta cama hay bichos y me est\u00e1n comiendo vivo\u201d), pero su significado a veces abarca tambi\u00e9n otros seres peque\u00f1os que no son insectos, como por ejemplo los roedores (rodent<\/strong>) y, en circunstancias excepcionales, sus fronteras sem\u00e1nticas pueden incluso abarcar un gato o hasta un perro. A pesar de mi categor\u00eda de extranjero y de tener un terriblemente imperfecto dominio del idioma, hasta he conseguido incluir en este campo sem\u00e1ntico animales del tama\u00f1o de una vaca y un caballo, y a\u00f1adiendo el sufijo \u2013aco he logrado que la palabra suene a algo temible e incluso amenazador. \u201c\u00a1Vaya bicharraco!\u201d(kind of huge ugly beast<\/strong>), exclamo en algunas ocasiones.<\/p>\n

Sin embargo, todo eso son unos inconvenientes ling\u00fc\u00edsticos de poca importancia comparados con el campo de minas (minefield<\/strong>) que constituye el escribir una carta o una nota.\u201d<\/p>\n

(The Parrot in the Pepper Tree, by Chris Stewart)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

For me as a teacher, it is very interesting to know what are the difficulties people have when learning Spanish, and what are their impressions about our language and culture. That is probably the reason why I\u2019m enjoying so much the book I\u2019m reading now: \u201cA Parrot in the Pepper Tree\u201d, after reading \u201cDriving over…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":5862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[66,358367,358369],"class_list":["post-5859","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vocabulary","tag-expressions","tag-literature","tag-vocabulary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5859"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5864,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5859\/revisions\/5864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/spanish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}