Wednesday, November 10, 2010

HELLO

Every culture has different ways of greeting people. I thought I’d share a few of the greetings Paraguayans use.

1. “Hola” is pretty straight forward and used in many Latin American cultures.

2. “Adios! is said when passing by someone (which seems funny to me). Actually, the “s” is dropped so the word sounds more like “Adio!” Paraguayans shorten the word even more to just “O!”

3. “Nde Guapa?” is used like we would say, “How are you?” and literally means, “Are you hard working?” I think it is a pretty cool question. The implication is that if you are hard working, you are healthy and if you are healthy, you are doing ok.

4. “Mba’éichapa?” is “how are you” in Gurani.

5. “Nde gorda” is not a question, but a statement which means, “You’re fat.” Paraguayans don’t have a problem describing someone as being fat (even to their face). It just isn’t taboo like it is in the US. If someone is fat, then they are seen as being healthy. I don’t think I’d ever be comfortable saying this to someone AND I don’t think I will ever get use to people saying this to me. Julia was 15 days old when we went back to San Francisco and tons of women greeted me by saying that I was now fat.

SOME FRIENDS










1 comment:

Jenifer Davidson said...

SERIOUSLY AMY...you are ANYTHING but fat. So how do they say wow you are skinny??? Ha!