Today I had my Castellano Class at the IFSA office. We were suppose to be discussing this book called La Cuidad Vista de Beatriz Sarlo. She mainly writes about Buenos Aires, and the chapter today was on el Shopping y vendedores ambulantes (street vendors).
Its funny because "Shopping" has crept into the Argentine lexicon, capitalised and all. It is used to describe shopping at the mall, so one would say "Where are you going? Shopping in Abasto."
My castellano teacher is v. funny and v. dramatic, which is hilarious in spanish. ( i think it's because she's of italian descent). She likes to act out certain words or grammar that we don't understand. The phone impressions are the best.
I learned today that:
Argentines are Italians who speak Spanish and think like the French.
Apparently pipi cucu means a elegant person from uruguay but I don't have proof. What I did find is that Pipi Cucu is the name of a chi-chi restaurant in Belgrano..
And Quilombo is slang for big disorder. This is a very informal word, and to those higher up the intellectual food chain, it is considered a bad word only because they most likely don't know the history behind it. The history behind the word is from Brazil, where Quilombo signified a place where escaped Africans lived. It was literally jam packed with all the people who escaped, mothers, daughters, children, men, women, abuelas, you name it. Thus, because of all the people living in one place, which can be a bit noisy, you have the word Quilombo. But you shouldn't take this as the gospel truth from me. Go google quilombo/africa/ meaning and you'll get a whole bunch of factual texts.
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