Pa´que sepas... - Spooky Male Turtles, By The Way

Hi everyone!  Hope we answered your questions alright! 

Joy does look great today, folks...

I checked mona and it is correct, it is the female form for monkey, elefante is just elefante. What about the zebra? La cebra!

You mentioned that a female dog can called una perra, but I've heard that term more often used to describe a swear word than to actually refer to a dog.  Is this word best avoided or is it ok to use?

For example, I would never call a female dog a b*%^% in English.  Could you shed some light on this situation in Spanish?

Hay un proverbio que dice: "Aunque la mona se vista de ceda, mona se queda"

A proposito...gracias por la respuesta a mi pregunta :)

According to wikipedia, the words for most domesticated animals change with an o or an a at the end to account for sex. 

For wild and some domesticated animals either the sex is fixed or a totally different word is used to designate sex, like el toro/la vaca for cow.  See the link below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_nouns

Spanish pod team

Thank you for answering my question

Steve

In response to thesmithtopher, I do hear the diminutive "perrita" used in reference to our family dog. She's big enough now to be called a "perra" but I've never had someone use that word to refer to her. It may be because she's cute, and/or it may be because people use "perrita" to avoid using the possibly controversial "perra." But I suspect that using "perra" isn't a big deal, at least in Mexico when you are obviously referring to an actual dog. I think people use other words if they want to insult a woman with a gender-specific word. 

When I was in El Salvador, staying on a farm for a couple of days, the kids were extremely precise when it came to the gender of an animal.  I remember once talking about the duck, calling it a "pato," the kids were totally confused.... then they pointed to the duck I was talking about and corrected me "no es un pato, ¡es una pata!"

Of course then I made a game of calling all the animals by the wrong name, which delighted and frustrated them, but the point is that getting the gender wrong caused a moment of confusion; they honestly could not look at the female duck and imagine why I would call her a pato.

I agree with mramueller when it comes to "perrita."

Also though, remember that insult words don't match up across languages; just because "perra" litterally means the b-word doesn't mean that the figurative meanings match semantically. 

Esti is going to tear this thread up on Monday...

JP, Leo

las adolecentes mutantes ninja tortugas machos ??? probably went by another name in mexico because the song wouldnt scan :-)

a proposito, i was not, at any time, upset or mad!!!
sorry if i gave that impression, too many exclamation marks perhaps?

regarding the present as past.:

A little while ago i posted a joke in the pets converstaion

and i put it in the present tense, a proposito, because, over here, its more usual to tell a joke in the present tense.

"a duck goes into a bar and orders a pint of guiness" and not,
"a duck went into a bar and ordered a pint of guiness."
so did you guys find the use of the present tense strange?

we also go in for verbal accounts along the lines of....
"so there i am minding my own business when this bloke comes up to me and he asks what the time is so i tell him its four oclock.....

crucially, i could tell someone this at 9 oclock without causing any confusion 
I'm truly surprised that this is incorrect spanish since spanish speakers are happy to use the  present tense use for future events, (i see you tomorrow)
I had assumed it would be just as acceptable when refering to the past (i see him last week)

thankyou once again for indulging me

Hi

It very well may depend on the country, but I know that in Colombia perra could be used as an insult and it means that same thing as it does in English.

 la palabra "P"? 
the b word (b for donkey not b for cow ) is really no big deal in the uk and i hear it used a lot on mainstream american tv, sometimes even with an extra sylable. if we can call a spayed a spayed surely we can call a female dog by the correct term without embarrassment in any language.
surely insults require intent to  be insulting whatever word one uses.

. . . I'm not sure I agree with donperigo on that last part.  Perhaps in a court of law intent is required for guilt or liability, but out in the world at large, insults can be felt where no intent to harm exists. 

This is what developing cultural sensitivity is all about . . . recognizing that someone can have a cultural and individual sensitivity that might be triggered by a comment that the speaker has no intent to use disparagingly.

And so learning the nuances of the languages we hope to use in various countries and contexts can be extremely helpful in this respect.

This forum tends to go off into some interesting areas.

Donperigo,

I also disagree. Not only do words have many connotations that might be insulting without intent, but because of cultural and language barriers/misunderstandings people might also misinterpret your intent. 

Last week I accidentally insulted a friend when I said "otra vez." My meaning was, "let's get together another time." In the context that I spoke it sounded like I meant that he had cancelled our meeting "another time" and that I was angry--which was the opposite of what I intended ("hasta la proxima" wold have been better). Luckily another friend heard the exchange and told me how what I said sounded, so I was able to quickly clear things up. 

The moral of the story is that even friends can misread your intent. The stakes are a lot higher when you are with strangers. 

Michael

Alma and mramueller, you're right in that the way you word things is sensitive and shouldn't be taken lightly.  Just look at what donperigo said and the reactions he solicited!

I'm not implying that either of you are angry with him, but I am using the present conversation as an example of how there is a lot of sensitivity with how things are said.

I find as a foreigner, one often gets a lot of slack on their word choices or grammar, often getting the benefit of the doubt, as people know you may not be able to choose your words as carefully as you would like.  However, like mramueller's example, even with the best intentions, you can insult people, which is what I'm trying to avoid.

So as far as perra goes, I think I'll save that word for the native speakers and let them say it a few hundred times before I go around saying Qué perra tan bonita.  Although honestly, I'd crack up if I heard someone come up to my girl puppy and say "What a cute little bitch".

speaking of ducks and jokes:

¿quién anda con una pata? (who walks with one leg?)

¡un pato!

¿qué gracioso? no sé pero mis amigos bolivianos rieron cuando les conté este chiste.

pues ,me hizo reir. :-) and since one good tern deserves another:

¿cuantas surrealistas se necesitan para cambiar una bombilla?

¡un pato!

querido donperigo -- creo que no entiendo bastante español para aprender este chiste o tal vez no entiendo bastante del surrealísmo.  por favor explícame

gracias amigo

donperigo, por favor explícanos el chiste, porque yo tampoco lo he entendido (no lo he pillado, this is slang to say that I didn´t understand)

There you go a list of male and female names for animals:

monO/ monA

elefenatE / elefantA

perrO / perrA

cerdO / cerdA

cebra (cebra macho/cebra hembra)

tortuga (tortuga macho/tortuga hembra)

caballo / yegua

vaca / toro

cabrón / cabra

carnero / oveja

Let me tell you guys, you can perfectly say "perra" if you are refering to a dog, really, even if it can have a bad mean too. The same thing happens with the animal "cabrón" which is the male term for goat. It's so normal when you meet a dog for a first time to ask ¿es un perro o una perra?

Esti, hola.  Do turtles also have "machismo" and do they sometimes treat the tortugas hembras muy mal?  Inquiring minds want to know.  Only joking with you of course. Gracias por su aclaración.  It is very helpful.

Hollis, Esti

Cuando escuché este chiste la repuesta era "un pez" pero lo he cambiado para quedar mejor la conversación.

El tipo de animal no es importa. La repuesta puede ser "un billete del autobús" o "queso" o cualquier cosa tu deseas.

La cosa importante es que la conexión entre pregunta y repuesta es sorprendente y aparentemente ilógico como en una sueña.

¿Por qué? porque este chiste es como un dicho de las surrealistas como el español Salvador Dalí.
 El chiste se mismo es un obra de surrealismo.

Disculpe, es un chiste de la escuela de las artes y consecuentemente algo elitista.

O quizás lo dije mal

He investigado wikipedia, y debería he dicho

¿Cuántos surrealistas hacen falta para cambiar un bombillo? ....un pez

¿Más cómico? ¿No?

Aquí es un vínculo a los chistes de bombillas

El pagina inglés, incluye la variación surrealista.

donperigo, that makes total sense, I guess I was looking for some meaning -- since my espanol is anything but complete

¡ja ja!

H

A propósito, I know several people who have purebreed dogs from Germany (Rottweillers and German Shepherds), and they use the b-word easily.  Still sounds weird to me though.  It's obviously a word used a lot by dog breeders/pedigree owners, but I wonder if it is also a German thing?  Gosh, that's really going off onto another subject...