mallorcan gems

As I walked through town this afternoon to buy snacks for my trip to Austria tomorrow—I'm visiting Heidi Herzog and Andi Schwab, two erstwhile language assistants in the Linfield German department—I saw the most beautiful sunset. Of course, I didn't have my camera with me, but Mallorca isn't lacking in beautiful sunsets. Here is a series of photos that I took about a month ago from the kitchen window:

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Utterly unrelated, but still interesting:

At the end of my previous post, I started a list of useful phrases that I´ve picked up since arriving. Here are a few more gems:

te sabe mal / et sap greu : please, would you mind. In Ecuador, they say "no seas maldita, hazme el favor..." which literally means, "Don't be evil, do me a favor..." Here, the common phrase is "¿te sabe mal...?" ("et sap greu...?" in catalan) which, translated word-for-word, means "Does it know you poorly?" or "Does it taste bad to you?" or something like that. It's the equivalent of the English, "Would you mind?..." (fill in the blank with what you want the person to do.) The real-life example that I heard: "Et sap greu deixar-me això?" (Would you mind leaving this with me?)

me has pillado : you got me! I was talking with a coworker from the school who was telling me about Carlos Moyá, a famous tennis player from Mallorca who is retiring. The only other famous tennis player from Mallorca that I've heard of is Rafa Nadal, who I learned about this summer: when people on my guided hikes at the LSR this summer (see at the workplace) learned that I was going to Mallorca, lots of people mentioned "that gorgeous Rafa Nadal." So, in order to expand my cultural learning, I asked my coworker who else was famous from Mallorca. "Erm... ara no sé...Jeni, me has pillado!" (Uh...at the moment, I don't know... Jeni, you got me!) "¿Me pillas?" is exactly how Ecuadorians say, "¿Me cachas?" in a conversation to check if the other person understands: You following me? You got me?

jolines : frick, darn, shoot. The nice form of "joder" or "jódete" --look those up in a dictionary; this is a family-friendly blog :) The kids, especially in the high school, use both the polite(ish) and not-utterable-in-church forms of this interjection.

ir de marcha / anar de marxa : to party. Literally: "to go on the march." Ecuadorian equivalent: farrear. A very useful phrase. Lots of words have X's in them in mallorquí, by the way. It's pronounced either "sh" or "ch", depending on the word. The word for "net" as in "internet?" Xarxa. "to talk"? Xerrar. My boss's name? Xisca.

el tió de Nadal caga regals : ok, so this isn´t exactly an everyday phrase. However, in my online catalan-learning course, this phrase popped up and it seemed share-worthy. For Spanish speakers, read the following explanation: "Diem que el tió caga regals, perquè el considerem un ésser viu (cagar, normalment, significa "fer excrement sòlid.")" In English: "We say that the Christmas tree shits presents, because we consider it to be a living being (shit, normally, means "to excrete solid waste.")"