Tuesday, March 22, 2011

¿Por qué estás chiquiteando wey?

Imagine yourself sitting in a bar or a nightclub with toda la banda drinking, laughing and just having a good old time, then all of sudden some asks you:

¿Por qué estás chiquiteando wey?

Before I go into what this means, let's talk about a few other things first.

If you don't know, "la banda" doesn't mean a musical band in this context.  "Toda la banda" is a way of saying you're with all your friends.

"Wey" is a way of saying "dude" in Mexico.  I talked about it before in this post.

Lots of people like to drink to beer, which everyone probably already knows means cerveza.   But what you may not know is that you can also ask for una chela bien fria - a nice cold beer. 

And if you've never been to a bar in Mexico, you may be surprised to find out that beers are commonly sold by the bucket.  Literally.


A bucket is called a cubeta.  It's a really effecient way of ordering chelas.  They sit on ice and the waiter comes by to open them up when you're ready.

Now let's get back to where we left off.

There you are in the bar sipping on your favorite chela, and then your friend asks:

¿Por qué estás chiquiteando  wey?

In this context, chiquitear means "to sip", so your friend wants to know why you're sipping, or as we like to say, nursing your drink.  I certainly hope you have a good explanation. 

I also need to tell you that "chiquitear" has another meaning that I'm not going to go into.  At least not in this blog, because its other meaning is much better suited for my sister blog, No Seas Pelangoche.  I've already posted about that, so if curiosity is getting the better of you then you'll want to click here

That's it for today. 

¡Hasta Pronto!

Monday, March 14, 2011

Me pones

The verb ponerse is highly used but rarely talked about in any Spanish book I've seen.  For whatever reason it's non-reflexive cousin poner gets all the glory.

Let's take a look at some ways ponerse is used:

Voy a ponerme guapa
I'm going to go make myself look pretty

Me pongo nervioso cuando estoy con chicas bonitas
I get nervous when I'm with pretty girls

¿Qué me pongo?
What should I put on?

Saber que estas mejorando me pone muy feliz
Knowing that you're getting better makes me happy

Se puso a hacer las maletas
He started packing his suit cases
 
Ponte el cinturón
Put on your seatbelt
 
Se puso enfermo y por eso no pudo ir
He got sick and that's why he couldn't go
 
Quiero ponerme en forma para el verano
I want to get in shape for the summer
 
Using ponerse is actually pretty straight-forward, and mastering it's use will make your Spanish sound very, very natural.  And as you can see from the examples above, you can use ponerse to talk about anything from putting on clothes, talking about your emotions, and even making yourself look nice, so you can see there are many uses of this verb. 
 
Before we wrap things up, there's one other usage I didn't cover.
 
Me pones
 
After looking at the previous examples, you may be tempted to think this is an incomplete sentence, but you'd be wrong.
 
Me pones
You turn me on
 
Mi novio no me pone para nada
My boyfriend doesn't turn me on at all
 
Shakira me pone
Shakira turns me on
 
I bet you didn't see that one coming.  It was a surprise for me too.
 
That's it for today, espero que te sirva.  
 
¡Hasta la próxima!