Missive #10 - Matanzas, Cuba - Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Missive #10

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

SET, Matanzas, Cuba

Names from ‘Generation Y’ and Some ‘Cubanisms’

There’s a very amiable older skinny black woman professor (I’m allowed to say the words black and white here without alerting the PC police) who teaches writing and composition at the seminary. 

I had taken my laptop to the little cafeteria across from the dining hall, together with a couple of long lists of names, with the intention of writing down the names beginning with Y.  Dumb idea, to think that I could actually get any work done in the most public and laid-back spot on campus. But it turned out to be great, because when the professor asked me what I was doing, and I told her, she immediately sat down and gave me another interesting explanation for this Cuban cultural phenomenon of the 1980s:

“After the Revolution, people were no longer allowed to give their girls the name of a boy, or their boys the name of a girl, and all the old Catholic names like María José or Jesús María were outlawed. So they eventually began to make up new names. Nowadays, the only people around with normal names are we older folks…my parents named me Mercedes, and my sisters have normal names too.”

Post-Castro, new parents naming a newborn child had to follow very many laws and rules and governmental regulations, just to have the kid properly registered as a bona fide Cuban citizen (and so they could add another person to the libreta for a greater amount of food rations).  And yet the choice of what to name your son or daughter was one of the few indelible freedoms a new parent could claim.

It was my own generation of new parents--those who began to have babies in the 1980s--who also began to exercise that freedom in a way that started out unique and then became a fad.  (Similar to when I named my second daughter, born in 1980, Ashley, and the nurses at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., all looked at me and said, “Mrs. Barton, are you sure you want to give your baby girl that boy’s name?”  Within a couple of years, the name Ashley had become one of the most popular American girls’ names of the ‘80s and ‘90s.)  In Spanish, there were no names at all beginning with the letter Y.  So the letter Y became the chosen initial letter.   In fact, according to my colleague Mercedes, the letter Y became so popular that letter itself was renamed:  instead of the original “i griega,” it is now known as the letter “ye”.

In moving to Cuba, I’d thought that I would finally find myself surrounded by people with names like my own--those found in most of the Spanish textbooks I’ve used in my teaching. Wrong. I have yet to meet a single other Elisa.  

The following list is of names belonging mostly to students here at the seminary, and nearly all of them were born in the 1980s.  I can tell this easily when I first meet them because they are about the same ages as three of my daughters.

Yohanes

Yanike

Yosneis

Yoelkis

Yarelis

Yadira

Yunisleydis (“la flaca”--the manicurist--has a twin sister known as “la gorda” who also has a Y name, but she didn’t write it down for me)

Yamilka

Yoani (the author of the blog “Generación Y”

Yurién (taxi driver between Matanzas and Varadero, born 1980--I have now started asking for their year of birth as soon as I hear another Y name)

Yahimy

Some ‘Cubanisms’

No, I did not just coin that word, though I did have to add it to my Microsoft Office dictionary.  And some of these expressions may not be any more particular to Cubans than to other Latin American speakers.  The one thing they all have in common is that they have no direct English translation or equivalent.  But I shall try to give a few examples of how these phrases are used in everyday speech:

Ya eso no es lo mismo.  Literally: “That is no longer the same thing.” Used when one has begun to make a comparison and then realizes that it is not quite valid.

Ni carece un guanajo. Literally:  “Not even a turkey is lacking.”  I’m not so sure what this means, but I’ve often heard it used as an expression of disgust, as in, “it doesn’t make the slightest difference.”  My mother (totyna@comcast.net) may be able to provide a good example with a better explanation, but she is somewhat Internet-disabled.

Con la tranquilidad más grande del mundo. Literally:  “with the greatest tranquility in the world.”  Used to describe a generally thoughtless action: “without giving it a second thought.”

¡Le zumba el mango!  This is definitely Cuban.  Literally: “The mango is thrown” (at someone or something).  Used to express incredulity over an outrageous action or event. 

Ni una papa…Literally: “Not even a potato.”  Means “not at all” or “not even a peep” or “not in the least.”

Encantada de la vida  Literally: “Enchanted with life.”  Used to describe a sense of delight, and freedom from worries, trouble, or problems.

¡Qué casualidad! Literally: What a coincidence!  But Cubans use it ironically to mean the opposite.

¡Está yumísimo!  Used to express that someone or something is “very American.” La Yuma means the United States.  It comes from the name of a Mexican border town called Yuma.   Vamos pa’ la Yuma means “We’re going to the U.S.” 

Comerse un cable. Literally: ”to eat a cable or an electrical cord.”   Used to express great difficulty. 

Estuve 10 meses en Cuba y me comí un cable.  “I spent 10 months in Cuba, and it took a lot of work.”

Lo que se formó allí fue tremendo. Literally: “What formed itself there was tremendous.”  Used to express an event which went from being uneventful to becoming tremendously eventful.

Ven acá… ¿y por qué tu no…?  Literally: “Come over here…and why don’t you…(why didn’t you)…?”  We Cubans love to second-guess anyone and everyone’s actions but our own.

With all my love from Cuba

Elisa

Added on 11/21/11

MORE ‘CUBANISMS’
Expressions used frequently in Cuba
Darle la cuerda a alguien:   Literally: to wind a person up (like a watch). Means to jerk one’s chain; to push one’s buttons.
Estar fuera de caldero:  Literally: to be out of the cauldron. Means to be hungry, not having eating in a long time.
Dios te ampare: Literally: God forbid you.  I remember my mother using this under dire circumstances, when she realized that her own authority wasn’t great enough to stand in the way of her children’s disobedience.
El boniato no da para más.  Literally: The boniato (a sweet potato that comes in various colors)  doesn’t give/do anything else.  Used to express that Cubans are no good at multitasking.  They admit only to being able to do one thing at a time. 
Le ronca la malanga. Literally: his malanga is snoring.  Very similar to “le zumba el mango.”  Used to express indignation and disbelief.
Está de yuca y ñame / Está de tranca / ¡Ay, carajo!:  Oh, hell!  Used to express that things are very bad.