Jugando con Palabras en Español
David P. Campbell
I was fortunate to grow up in rural Iowa with both a mother and a grandmother who loved language. My grandmother would recite poetry by the hour, especially Wordsworth, and my mother was always playing word games. For example, when I remarried later in life, at the wedding reception—which was reasonably posh, with tuxes and all—she passed out little slips of paper with the following poem, explaining, “David always liked this sort of thing”
SEVILLE DER DAGO
TOUSAN BUSES INARO
NOJO DEMIS TRUX
SUMMIT COWSIN SUMMIT DUX.
This heritage has continued to stimulate me, especially when I recently decided that I had to get serious about learning another language. Our world is becoming ever more global, and at CCL we are spending more time in international activities. So, for a flurry of personal and professional reasons—not the least of which is my constant sense of monolinguistic inferiority—I have been tackling Spanish.
It has been slow going. Some recent research on brain activity suggests that after age ten or twelve, complete and accentless fluency in another language is essentially impossible; sadly, I am a couple of generations past that point. My experience agrees with the research. I note with frustration that I can hear a Spanish word seventeen times and not recognize it on the eighteenth.
To keep up my motivation, and for the learning that it provides, I have retreated to my family's approach and have been playing with the Spanish language—jugando con palabras en español—both spoken and sung. Although the learning is still slow, the enjoyment is high. Proverbs, maxims, adages, and poems are fun, and—an unexpected benefit—they provide a window on the Spanishspeaking mind.
If French is the language of love, then Spanish is the language of passion. It is especially rich with references to sex, death, dancing, blood, bones, fighting, and the devil, with sentiments ranging from ethereal to tragic and from pathos to comedy—especially the low country humor of the sort that we were familiar with in Iowa.
In the spirit of increasing the intercultural awareness of those in leadership roles, and also for the simple love of language, I will repeat here some sayings in Spanish that I have recently come across. They come from a wide range of sources: books of proverbs, dictionaries, newspapers, many from conversations with Spanish-speaking people who know of my interests. Some are quite old; others were coined on the spot. I have appended my translations, and where necessary I have added a few words of explanation.
Más vale pájaro en mano que cien volando. [Better a bird in the hand than a hundred flying.]
No es lo mismo hablar de toros que estar en el redondel. [It's not the same to speak of bulls as to be in the bull ring.]
Hay más tiempo que vida. [There is more time than life.]
Quien con la esperanza vive, alegre muere. [Who lives with hope dies happy.]
Viviendo y muriendo bailamos con la vida. [Living and dying we dance with life.]
Las acciones de las mujeres en la vida de las naciones son lo que constituye la poesía de la historia. [The deeds of women in the life of nations is what creates the poetry of history.]
La cosa más maravillosa del amor es lo especial que nos hace sentir. [The most marvelous aspect of love is how special it makes us feel.]
El hombre es fuego, la mujer estopa; llega el diablo y sopla. [The man is fire, the woman straw; along comes the devil and blows.]
Esto me está aburriendo como una ostra. [This is making me as bored as an oyster.] This is perhaps my favorite. What a great phrase. Mutter it under your breath at your next business meeting. Don't quote me.
No vendas la piel del oso antes de haberlo matado. [Don't sell the bearskin until you have killed the bear.]
El mejor torero es el de la barrera. [The best bullfighter is in the box seats.]
Aunque la mona, se vista de seda, mona se queda. [Even though a monkey is dressed in silk, it is still a monkey.] Note that because of cadence and rhyming, the Spanish is often much catchier than the English translation. A Chilean friend reminds me that Spanish is not monolithic. Mona does mean “monkey,” but in Spain and much of Latin America it means “beautiful” and in Colombia it means “blonde”; in Mexico it means “coward.” To complicate matters, agarrar una mona apparently means “to get drunk.”
Cuando esta víbora pica, no hay remedio en la botica. [When this snake bites, there is no remedy in the drugstore.] This comes from a Mexican gentleman who is describing a sword hidden in his riding crop.
Todos nacemos llorando y nadie se muere riendo. [We are all born crying and no one dies laughing.]
El santo que no está presente no tiene vela. [The absent saint gets no candle.] You have got to be there to protect your budget.
En el país de los ciegos el tuerto es rey. [In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.]
La ira es locura, el tiempo que dura. [Anger is a short madness.]
Quien tiempo toma, tiempo se sobra. [The busiest people find the most leisure time.]
Me muero por una cerveza fría. [I'm dying for a cold beer.] Good to add to your repertoire.
Él que algo quiere, algo le cuesta. [He who wants something has to pay for it.] Another way of saying “No pain, no gain.”
Bailar bien o bailar mal, todo es bailar. [Whether you dance well or whether you dance poorly, it's all dancing.]
Let me close by saying,
Yo soy del pueblo. [I'm just a country boy.]
P.S. You would have solved my mother's poem more quickly if you understood the implied transportation of waterfowl: “See, Willie, there they go, /Thousand buses in a row. /No, Joe, them is trucks,/ Some with cows in, some with ducks.”
David P. Campbell is Smith Richardson Senior Fellow in Creative Leadership at CCL in Colorado Springs. Formerly a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, he is the author of several well known books including Inklings: Collected Columns on Leadership and Creativity (CCL, 1992).