Visual Link Spanish Newsletter (V:1; I:23)

Visual Link Spanish™ Course: $149.95!-----

Spanish Culture ----- How young is young?

In English, when we say "She is young" or "She is a youth", it means that "she" is probably a teenager or younger. (Those in England and Australia, please let me know if it's different there.) In Spanish, when you say "She is a youth", it means that "she" is anywhere from age 1 to age 29.

To illustrate this point, when I was learning Spanish in Latin America at age 19, I was talking to some people and began to tell them a story. I started off by saying, "When I was young." To my surprise, they all started laughing and said, "You are still young!" I said "What do you mean, I'm still young". They laughed even more and said "You're young." Because it was a cultural difference, at first I didn't understand what they meant -- in my opinion, I wasn't young anymore. During the next few months, I realized that when a native Spanish speaker talked about a "young person", or "being young", or "a youth", they were talking about someone who is either a child, a teenager, or even into their late twenties.

Another example of this is when I was 28 years old; I went to a company called Autoliv to give some ESL (English as a Second Language) placement tests to native Spanish speakers. I was about to test a Spanish speaking lady who was probably in her 50's. She was smiling and seemed to be a very happy and friendly person. When she came to sit down at the testing table, she said "Hola joven" [oh-law ho-ben] - or in English "Hi youth". I said "Hola" to her and began the session. As we continued, she called me "joven" (young person or youth) about 6 or 7 times. She would say things like "OK joven", or "muy bien joven", or "está bien joven" and so forth. It is very common for Latin people in their fifties or older to call people in their twenties or younger "joven".

The moral to this story is: In Latin America, until you hit age 30, you're younger than you think. This is a fun little tidbit of culture that I wanted to share with you this week.

Click here to learn Spanish with free Spanish lessons.

¡Nos vemos! (We'll see you!)


David S. Clark -- President
U.S. Institute of Languages
dave@spanishprograms.com
http://www.spanishprograms.com