Hooped

George Bernard Shaw is credited with saying England and America are “two countries separated by a common language” but you don’t have to cross the Atlantic to run into problems.

I came across an on-line article yesterday about “Canadianisms” – words and phrases commonly used in Canada but unfamiliar to people below the 49th Parallel.

It features words like Tuque, which is a knit cap similar to what we might call a watch cap, and Hooped, more or less synonymous with FUBAR, an adjective which describes a situation so screwed up as to be unfixable.

The article reminded me of a true story about the difference in Mexican and Puerto Rican Spanish. 

An old friend of mine has bright red hair (now going gray) and looks as Irish as a Leprechaun, but he is of pure Spanish descent and was born and raised in Puerto Rico.  He is married to a Mexican woman.

On their first trip to California to meet her parents, Felix saw his mother-in-law drop a clothespin as she was hanging out the wash.  He rushed toward her saying “Let me get your pinza.” It was all perfectly innocent – pinza is Spanish for clamp or pincer and in Puerto Rico it is the word commonly used for a clothespin.  Unfortunately, it is also crude Mexican slang for a certain female body part.  

He says they can laugh about it now, but it was several months before she would stay in the same room with him, even when his wife was around.