from Mexican Spanish to English
pinche
A vulgar term that everyone uses. An intensifier, usually negative, as in, the phrase popular with drivers, "pinche hijo de La Chingada," "lousy son of the archetypal whore." But it's occasionally used in a positive sense, as in "que pinche culota!" "what a piece of ass!"
A Mexican writer who had just come back from Spain told me "I don't understand how they survive without 'pinche'.
Mark Weiss
from Spanish to English
Spanish possessive pronoun "su"
His, hers, its, their. And in the polite form, "your."
Mark Weiss
from Spanish to English
In most varieties of Spanish, there are two singular forms of the second person pronoun: Usted and tú. The former is a formal pronoun, used for social superiors and new acquaintances. The latter is familiar. 'Tutear' is a verb meaning 'to address someone as "tú"'. However, the meaning isn't purely linguistic: It indicates familiarity. Thus, 'Puedes tutearme' ('You can address me as "tú"') is an invitation to familiarity. The connotation is similar to the English phrase 'to be on a first name basis with', but I can't think, off-hand, of an English term or phrase that describes personal relationships through linguistic usage in the same way.
[This also reminds me of the term 'voseo', which means 'the use of the second person singular 'vos' in place of 'tú'. 'Vos' is favoured in a few Latin American countries, including Costa Rica (the source of my familiarity with the term). This strikes me as probably different from what you're looking for.]
Bob Offer-Westort
San Francisco, California, USA
re: tutear, the same meanings, social and linguistic, apply to the French "tutoyer" and its opposite, "vousvoyer." One way French people define what makes the very rich not like you and me is that they vousvoient their children and parents.