I miss English. One of my favorite things to do with it is to play around with it. I like how anything can become a verb, and if enough people start using it, it becomes official. For example, “to search using google” is perhaps all but officially known as googling. I apply that same principle and I use verbs like “to youtube”, “to facebook”, you get the idea.
I’ve started doing that here with Spanish. I’m trying to get a few of my words into the mainstream, and while some of the kids I know use a couple of them now, it hasn’t quite reached the popularity I’m looking for. Here are some of my examples:
My first and favorite: siestar – to take a siesta.
Ex. No me llames porque estoy siestando. (Don’t call me because I’m taking a siesta.)
Ex. Cuando vamos a siestarnos (When are we going to take a siesta?)
Lambarearse – to go to Lambaré (the town the church is in), most commonly reflexive
Ex. Después de salir Puma, nosotros nos lambareamos. (After leaving Puma, we went to Lambaré.)
Ex. Me lambareo ahora porque hay una reunión. (I’m going to Lambaré now because there’s a church service.)
Ben says siestar isn’t catchy, and Vivi said there already is kind of a verb for it (sestar), but no one uses it except sometimes in books. He did say Lambarear is cool, so we’ll see. The only risk I run is everyone in Paraguay thinking I’m an idiot who doesn’t know the language, but there’s always a chance people will confuse brilliance with idiocy.
-j
I'm Jason, and I like to write.
Don’t introduce ebonics into the paraguayan language! :O
lol… leave it to you to try and revise languages
I’m all for siestar and tried to invent that myself in Spain.
I’ve also tried introducing “compart” into English…as in, “I’d like to compart the meal with you.” (Just FYI too, I’m one of Ben’s old college friends and happened to be looking at your blog. Tell him I said hi!)