Galician is uniquely rich in fixed expressions for that romantic-but-vexing moment when a man sees something he’d like to fuck. Many languages (French and Catalan come to mind) have their own clichéd versions of “do you come here often?” but Galician, in spite of losing its lexical footing a bit as it mixes with Spanish, is balls-out prolific with its pickup lines.
Galician is of course the language of Galicia, a mostly rural area in the northwest of the Iberian peninsula (you are perhaps more familiar with Galician’s southern cousin, European Portuguese, which is very close to being the same as Galician). As a function of Galician’s agricultural context, the language’s pickup lines evince an obsession with tractors (you can be as pretty as one, or as turbo-charged in your humping) and cows (owning them makes you desirable).
Most importantly, this is apparently the only language to have coined an onomatopoeia for finger-banging.
Galician women are known for being agarimosas (affectionate) and also for being decisive — once they set their sights on you they’ll stop at nothing to have you and keep you. But at the same time they can be relatively cold to strangers; my guess is that the following were developed over many evenings of compounding sexual frustration. (It’s certainly not the only example of linguistic creativity born out of misery.)
We’ll finish on a video of a rather inebriated Galician making use of that last item, fuch fuch. This video went viral, giving him renown throughout Galicia; one assumes that as a result of this performance he has never heard the sweet sound since.
Update: This infamous video has been removed from YouTube and then reuploaded a few times; but hopefully the version below will work when you read this. If not, run a search for “fuch fuch”. Update again: the video is removed from YouTube and no longer available anywhere as far as I know. My favorite line from the video: “It’s not polite to talk about people, but…”
I’d like to thank my Galician sources, Marina Sánchez and Xurxo Salgado, for their help in editing and translating these. As I was writing this, Marina was kind enough dispatch a last-minute addition:
Mose,
I’m in a family dinner right now and they’ve just reminded me of the following:
Pegariache unha lambetada de cona a cu e de cu a cona que non vas a saber si correrte ou cagarte de gusto. —
I’d lick you up and down between your asshole and your pussy so much you won’t know if you feel like shitting or coming!
My god, what nonsense!
Thanks Marina. I hope you were able to enjoy the rest of your dinner.
Update: August 25, 2012
Nice to see some new readers: Ola Galiza!
In response to the more negative comments below: Nationalism (or regionalism, patriotism, whatever) is an understandable reaction; it’s also boring. Disagree with something I’ve said? Tell me what I’ve got wrong, and tell me what joking, flirting and sex in Galicia is really like. Just saying that I’m “tirando a nosa cultura polo chan” isn’t so useful.
My readers are not fucking idiots; they do understand that if you actually said these to a Galician girl you’d get (deservedly, and at the very least) slapped in the face.
I loved discovering a few things about Galicia (I’m surprised this isn’t evident to a few of you) and I’m happy to hear more — please continue to share in the comments. I’ve clarified some of the translations based on your comments, though translation is an art and it’s hard to make everyone happy.
And before you go thinking this is all about you, you may want to check out some of my other articles, and learn about the ridiculous ways we screw in other parts of the world, e.g.: sloppy kissing in Brazil, stages of sexual conquest in America, losing one’s virginity in Albania, etc.
“I’m aware that these phrases are all mixed up with Spanish”
Called ‘castrapo’, I believe. Not uncommon.
Galego variants can be found within a few kilometres. For example, the G sound between Pontevedra and A Reigosa, 16km away.
Years ago I saw a map showing, I think, 5 main Galego ‘zones’ and read that galegofalantes from Sanxenxo would have difficulty understanding folk from Lugo, for example.
In short, it’s bit of a minefield. And that’s before you get to the argument about whether Gallego is the parent of Portuguese or vice versa.
I await the criticisms of these anodyne comments . . .
Iago; coóuseche/colóuseche un “luego” donde debía ser un “logo” 🙂 . Non é fácil p’os que estudiamos Inglés na escola pasar directamente do Galego ó Inglés, e do Inglés ö Galego, pero resulta que para nós aínda había ser máis fácil de aprender que estudándoo a paratir do castelán.
Yeah, I’m aware that these phrases are all mixed up with Spanish; the goal was not to report on a “pure” Galician but rather how it is actually spoken right now.
Joder, qué asco… odio ser un subser gallego.
Dásm’unha lástima…
I found it really funny, great read.
Nena vouche faser a cona reversible (with seseo as I am from a sailor town).Girl gonna make you cunt reversible.
But my favourite galician expression is,not sex related:nunca choveu que non escampara, take it me everywhere I go when I am low.
Saude.
Oh dear. OK, I’ve added it to the list.
1. Galician is not a dissapearing tongue.
2. Galicia was during all it history a rural area, but reading this it seems that we are a region of “paletos” and “montunos”.
3. We aren´t obsessed with tractors and cows, and owning some lands is not important in flirting.
4. We say this phrases for joking, but we dont flirt using them. they only are used by a minority part of the population
i like the compilation, but i dont like the things that you say about galicia in the start of the article.
Miña nai… Non tedes senso do humor. É unha broma!
Non é unha broma, son recopilacións da nosa cultura; e non quere dicir que non saibamos falar doutra maneira, quere dicir que somos capaces de falar así tamén.
@Maria — I'm not changing the title, because even as you yourself describe the situation, it appears that "disappearing" is apt. But I do hope that it doesn't ever disappear; it's a lovely language! Let's do everything we can to maintain it (including its jokes, quirks, and obnoxious ticks).
As for the comments about pickup lines in America or the UK, in my experience these places have hardly the richness and creativity in this field that one finds in Galicia. But if you can prove me wrong, I'd love to write about that too.
I'm Galician, and what actually bothered me is the tittle: disappearing tongue. I'm not a nationalist, but first of all, Galician is a recognized language. Then, "disappearing", might be true in some ways as prejudices make it be less spoken or written than years before, but is still spoken in the rural areas, studied at school and written by many authors, and I believe that the young generations are accepting it better than the ones that were born during the dictatorship.
It is true that some boys, specially in some of the rural areas, use some of this expression, but I have seen teenagers using them as a joke, not for flirting, and I bet that they wouldn't work at all anyway. Also, I have lived in America, and have heard even worse expressions than this and I was asked more times to have sex in really nasty ways than when I lived in Galicia. So I would take all of these as no more than a joke and not something to get mad about, but I ask the author to please change the tittle, as it is insulting for me and any Galician speaker.
a xente, que pensa que por escribir un articulo é mais listo que millóns de galegos.
Non tes cultura nin educacion rapaz@!!!
This article is pure crap, I'm Galician, I have 12 years old and I'm from a cultured city, Santiago de Compostela, with educated people with historical buildings , very nice people and of course we are very polite, we are neither rural nor as vast as we are described here, this asshole things are saying just for some teenager that think is funny, but I think that kind of people is all over the world , I have been in England a lot of times (I have family there) and since then I have heard much more unpleasant things to people drunk on the streets of London, so if you go to galicia identify with so vast and rural examples, begin by your country
Pero entonses, ti crias vacas ou plantas patacas?
– first of all, many people here doesn't have a sense of humour. Many of these expressions and even worse ones were used for years by Heredeiros da Crus, which is a legendary galician rock band. This is very typical galician humour. Genuine galician type humour at its best.
– second, dont use this with anyone in Galicia, or you will die… lol
– third, the expression were the father goes to sleep out, should just be understood as "breaking a marriage", like "if you were married, I'll go to your house to fuck you and your husband will have no choice but to go sleep outside"
I am galician and I love this kind of posts… only intelligent people can get the thing
cheers!
Un comentario con xeito sí señor
Mose Hayward porco ti es un porco.Vai facer unha reportaxe da puta que te pariu.
This is where I live……GALICIA……. this is where I was born, hope you enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfLXH6daMyE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-1Fg6sMyl4
hope you can say the same.
Those are not sentences Galician people use to flirt, but to have a laugh. But i don't expect some british minds to understand it. This article says nonsense, and from my point of view, the writers and the so called "collaborators" should be "colghados dos collóns", that means, hung by their balls, for talking about what they will never be able to understand. You british are not supposed to understand shit, so stop messing around and go back to your fish and chips and your sexless life
What a fukin' shit. Most of the expressions are wrong, and the translations even worse. These are just jokes here in Galicia, nothing but jokes. They've never been used as romantic lines. Never.
And Galician is not a disappearing tongue. It's a shame that someone can write this shit about our culture and spread it around the world.
Next time write about what is in your knowledge, prince.
"But at the same time they can be relatively cold to strangers; my guess is that the following were developed over many evenings of compounding sexual frustration. (It's certainly not the only example of linguistic creativity born out of misery.)"… Si, somos unhos acomplexados Leiran, non sabemos entender "bromas" tan directas como estas. Este home igual quere ter ironía, pero non lle da, quédase no medio e roza (eu digo que traspasa) o umbral da ofensa. Primeiro que aprenda a ser gracioso, logo que faga bromas.
@Leirán Exactamente, estou de acordo en todo o que dis, en especial no dos complexos… Dixeron por aí arriba que hai 200 millóns de persoas (!!!) que falan galego. Simplemente iso, complexos.
Un saúdo.
Thanks to this most enjoyable polemic I’ve learned a few things:
1. Lazyness (i.e. writting a comment in Catalan on an English language site knowing its author and other romance language speakers will understand it) can be easily –and surprisingly– misinterpreted as a call for Catalan independence.
2. For some obscure sociological reason, in a fucked up country such as Galicia or Catalonia the extremes of self-hatred (sometimes disguised as harmless humour: “we are crap, ha, ha, that’s true”) and obsessive pride for one’s country or language (“we are touched by God and Americans are crap compared to us, ha, ha”) are more populated than in less fucked up countries (i.e. states, where they can spend more time writing about more interesting things like sex and drinking). (This, by the way, could be counted as a separatist statement.)
3. Whether those mentioned in a joke based on national stereotypes find it funny or not does definitely depend on who tells it (and on where they stand in the continuum of self-hatred / obsessive pride).
4. Only those who haven’t been to stupidly noisy, mexican hat crazed, stinky fake gaudinian, dog shit infested Barcelona can still believe the marketing lie that it’s actually a cool place. (This is not self-hatred, just come and see.)
Mr. Tipsy, please, keep posting, I’m learning so much. Thanks.
I am happy that not all the galician men are like the boy of the video. i think he's very disgusting. excuse my english, I'm only a poor galician girl without education and obsessed with cows and tractors.
Encantado con este artigo e cos comentarios. Hay que darse conta de que en Galicia hay xente acomplexada, porque a houbo desde sempre, e antes era motivo de vergonza falar galego e non saber falar ben castelán. Digo esto porque é a mellor maneira de entender algúns comentarios nos que se len protestas contra o artígo.
Para os que protestan, que comprendan que todos sabemos que non se piropea así, que son frases inxeniosas e graciosas para facer rir. E con tal motivo de facer rir, algunhas veces sirven pra facer rir ás rapazas ás que se lle din, e poden ser de moita utilidade á hora de empezar unha conversación.
Tamén hay o típico imbécil que lle molesta esta interacción entre galego e inglés, porque adoecen cando non fai falta o seu "culto" castelán para formar unha relación entre dous sitios tan alonxados un do outro.
Máis adiante hei de facer un análisis sobre esta clase de frases, e hei de dar algúns motivos de por qué resultan graciosas ou inxeniosas.
Sir , I’d like to say , sorry, but you totally missed the point with this article .
That is not Galician but some kind of Mocklician.
As a native speaker of the Galician language I couldn't recognise most of these expressions as being Galician but crude translations from Spanish slang, these are probably used as jokes by some people from the so-called Galician big cities (Vigo and Corunha) who are primarily Castillian speakers and consider Galician some kind of second-class language even if they are able to speak it. It's their way have a laugh at the accents of their countryside cousins.
As your texts suggest, they usually add the "gheada" sound for “g” (something like the English sound of “h” in Hotel ) because with this sound any expression is apparently funnier for those Castillian speakers, even when most of us native speakers don’t pronounce it.
As for the “disappearing tongue” bit , this must be another joke because , Galician is spoken by more than 200 Million and I understand you also speak our language , I think its Brazilian variant which, by the way, sounds more similar to the Galician phonetic than the Portuguese used in Lisbon .Well, we both Galicians and Brazilians actually still pronouncing all the vowels .
Anyway , in short and since you understand Galician:
Este artigo é uma trapalhada, meu !!
You're American, right?. This comment shows how they are all abnormal. From you can not expect anything good, criminals, I never mix with you.
That sure as ye taken away from a forum in Portuguese but the Galicians are not Portuguese, and Galician and Portuguese is not the same, so all of this, I meteis it up the ass, ignorant monkeys.
May you and hope the ass dean disappiar of this world, garbage is what you are.
Manda carallo!!!!
O que escribiu esto non sabe nin escribir ben inglés (eu son inglesa, con avós galegos), e non ten nin idea de como é Galicia, como se liga en Galicia, nin coñece o humor galego nin o británico.. en fin.. aí moita xente aburrida e ignorante.. vos deixo aquí un link para saber de verdade acerca da nosa terra:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/travel/galicia/9492347/romantic-holiday-galicia-cuisine.html
Awesome 🙂
I have one more to add:
"Nena, comemos ou fodemos? Pan non hai…" >> "Baby, shall we eat or fuck? Since there's no bread…"
But, of course, one should note that "foder" is not quite as strong a word as "to fuck", as far as I understand.
Keep up the good work!
Galician sense of humor, it could be written an encyclopedia about it. You move 30 km. (20 mi.) away and you get completely new sentences and jokes. It's also funny to hear some old people when they pisses off (in this video you don't hear not much complexity, but it is still fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrArFo0z7qI). You also should listen to "Heredeiros da Crus", so you can explore the northern shores speaking. Galician could be so ingenious and funny, I was always surprised with it during my 18 years living in Galicia.
See this: "eres máis feo/fea que cuspir no caldo" wich means: "you're uglier than spitting into the soup" assuming the double meaning of "ugly" also for something "not correct".
I also want to say that "olá" it's only in Portuguese, in Galician, the correct graphy is "ola".
Thanks for this cool collection!
Its so anoying, because the people you talk about in your letters cant come here to defend their selves.Most of Galician rural people doesnt speak English.
Some of these translations are inaccurate, review them please -nice suggestions were provided in previous comments.
"Sex in Galicia" using these phrases? Good tag if you wanted to grab your reader's attention, but quite improbable tbh. And I personally don't like it. It looks like you'll get sex straight after saying things like "vouche comer a reghla a cullaradas"…xa sei quén dís, que dixo o outro. Tsk tsk.
These phrases -if said, are always brought up for the sake of having a good laugh, mostly between mates/known people that perfectly know and understand that you're joking. Believe me, you won't have success if you use these phrases to flirt with a girl. They are way out of fashion/context/place in most of the cases, if not completely impolite.
'Fuch-fuch'?!?…I am afraid you are the only person that has coined it as Galician! As it was mentioned before, this is a (funny) Galician guy whose video became viral in Youtube, I never heard this expression before nor my mates. Double-check these kind of affirmations before writing them, overall if you have Galician friends that you can consult with!
As a side point, it may be worth to mention that some of those expressions -even though they can be understood by everybody in Galicia, are regional/local within the same Galicia.: i.e. "Ghastas pista" sounds Ribeira-like 100% (thanks to Heredeiros I suposse!) but in my town people would pronounce it without "gheada".
Last, please modify/change the title of the post, my eyes bleed every time I read "disappearing tongue"!!
As you can see, most of the critics you have received come from Galicians like me, who feel you have created a stereotype out of a few old joky phrases. Hope you make the most of the feedback you have received about this post and correct some of the things you have assumed as right.
PS- Just a minor thing, "Olá" is not Galician. Maybe you wanted to write "Ola"?
As a Galician I've heard, of course, some of these pick up lines before. But saying they are common is actually quite far from reality. These are the classic phrases used mainly by construction or field workers that became famous sometimes for being a nice combination of rude and witty. But I have never heard them being used out of the joking context. And as you write them in the article, many of them are written with the spelling of some different dialects Galician has (the pronunciation changes a lot), and not in actual Galician in its official form.
But, indeed, the biggest mistake of the article is talking about Galician as a dissapearing tongue. It is not only growing in number of speakers (everybody has to study in both Galician and Spanish in a 50/50 basis), but it has at the moment several million speakers. Including the Galician population (almost 100% of the natives are bilingual Spanish/Galician) and the massive amount of Galicians abroad, it's usually considered to have between 6 and 7 million speakers. That's a bigger number of speakers than many languages in the world, including Finnish, Slovakian, Estonian, Latvian, Slovenian, Bosnian, and many others. It also has way more speakers (maybe around 6 times more) than the Basque language, which is usually more known abroad.
It is really funny (and interesting) to see these pick up lines being translated to English, but, when relating to the language or the region, you are writing things using guessing more than facts. I strongly encourage you to visit Galicia to be able to write a 2.0 version of this article 😉
Great bullshit writen by an asshole. Galiza ceibe de españois e de eivadas mentais coma ti.
"Os teus si que son ollos, non os das patacas" means, as you say, "Yours really are eyes, and not those of potatoes". However, there is an explanation for that:
In Spanish and in Galician: the "eyes" (ojos) of potatoes is also the word for those round rough spots formed on their surface, from which new plants are born -may I remind potatoes are roots, just in case. I guess you have seen those spots on potatoes and even the new plant growing out of them, even though you don't live in a rural area, when you have left a potato for some time in your kitchen cupboard.
vouche facer un fillo viquingo! I'm going to got you pregnat with a viking baby!
Dissapearing language? Undeveloped area? You need context, friend. Maybe it's an undeveloped area comparing to other parts of Spain, but we don't live in the caverns and Galician language is co-oficial in our land, so everybody studies and speaks it.
The article is good, but it can be offensive for us. I don't think you intend any wrong, but you could certanly sound less pejorative with a region that maybe doesn't have so much industrial power but, because of that, is lucky to preserve so many forests and beautiful beaches. Those phrases are only used as a joke, mainly from construction workers.
Para o fem fatal. Ti non sabes que o artigo é en galego? Parbo do carallo!! A pedi-la independencia as cortes do noso estado español, e do teu!!
"E logho ti, de quen ves sendo?" = "Which family do you belong to?" (not *"Who is your father?")
They are not specifically asking about your father, but about any relative they may know: your parents, your grandparents, your aunt, your uncle, your cousins…
I´m from Galicia, from the rural Galicia, and I must say i never ever heard anyone use this expressions with me or with any other girl, this article is less more than offensive and stereotiped. Those expressions are only meant as jockes that nobody uses, people in the rural Galicia as not as stupid as they want you to believe, i guess this article was writen with the help of someone Spanish speaker from any of the main cities, they may like to make fun of themselves, but some of us are offensed to see our people and culture injured like this.
I'm galician, and I have to say I think it's funny, all these sentences are usual language of men from rural Galicia, they are common in conversations among men, just for laughing, after some drinks it's also common to say some of then to a woman, but once again it's just joking, no one hopes to flirt with these sentences!!
BTW, some mistakes/misunderstandings with translations:
– Nena, non teño pelos na lingua porque ti non queres. – I don't have hair in my tongue because you don't want
– Se foses a miña nai, o meu pai ia ir durmir ao palleiro. – If you were my mother, my father would sleep in the barn.
– E ló ti qué? – how you doing? (it's common for Spanish people to misunderstand the use of the word "ló / luego" made by a Galician, the Galician sentence "y luego?" can be translated in Spanish as "y eso?")
I'm galician, and I have to say I think it's funny, all these sentences are usual language of men from rural Galicia, they are common in conversations among men, just for laughing, after some drinks it's also common to say some of then to a woman, but once again it's just joking, no one hopes to flirt with these sentences!!
BTW, some mistakes/misunderstandings with translations:
– Nena, non teño pelos na lingua porque ti non queres. – I don't have hair in my tongue because you don't want
– Se foses a miña nai, o meu pai ia ir durmir ao palleiro. – If you were my mother, my father would sleep in the barn.
– E ló ti qué? – how you doing? (it's common for Spanish people to misunderstand the use of the word "ló / luego" made by a Galician, the Galician sentence "y luego?" can be translated in Spanish as "y eso?")
Nunca lin tantas parvadas xuntas… con que clase de xente falaches para documentarte?
don´t expect everyone to tell you the very same phrases when you´re in Galicia, I´m half german half galician and there is not as many rural areas as there used to be, so I guess "we"´re loosing the "old customs"
Yo miss "quen te pillara nunha noite de xiada" = I wish I've stayed/sleep/fuck with you in a frosty night
Translations updated. Thanks folks for all your comments.
Me parto la goma neno
Son galelgo, e doe na alma poder chegar a ler cousas coma esta. Incultura e ignorancia é o único plasmado neste artigo.
Galego ist the language of Galiza, not Gallego, only with one "l"… A minimum research , pl!!!!
Yep, there are indeed a few translation mistakes, some of which totally change the meaning and/or the pun. And it’s very important to bear in mind that, on the one hand, these are just jokes – nobody who really wants to flirt uses any of these; and on the other hand, from a linguistical point of view, the grammar and spelling are dialectal in many cases. I'm not correcting those, but for example the letter J doesn't exist in this language.
"Nena… ¿ti enrolas ou empacas?" Both enrolar and empacar are tasks you do while making bales of straw. You can find whatever connotation you want there.
“Os teus si que son ollos, non os das patacas.” A potato’s “eyes” are the non-germinated buds (the little green thingies they have, called yemas in Spanish, and I think also ojos). Therefore, the meaning of this sentence is similar to that of the garlic’s “teeth”.
“Tes uns ollazos que me matan.” “You have eyes that kill” sounds to me as a better translation, maybe… but your version is good too, methinks.
“Ghuapa, ghuapa non é, pero ten un pelaso…” Here, the suspension points are a very important element. They are used the same way as in Spanish. When you say in Spanish “hace un calor…” it doesn’t mean “there is a hot” or anything, it’s a kind of incomplete sentence, and the last part would be “…que quema” (which burns), “…que no se aguanta” (which can’t be endured), etc. “Pelaso” is the aumentative of “pelo” (hair), which means the hair is very beautiful, and the suspension points could be “precioso” (beautiful), “abraiante” (mind-blowing), etc. This is a very common use of suspension points all throughout Spain, including Galicia and its language, of course. So the point is not “you aren’t pretty but have long hair”, but rather “you aren’t pretty but your hair is awesome”. Your translation is bad but the explanation is good, so I guess you got the point after all 😛
The poison one is perfect. I don’t know why someone says it isn’t. It can be assumed that it refers to semen, but veneno means poison and semen is never called veneno.
“Nena, non teño pelos na lingua porque ti non queres.” This is another pun. As you say, “no tener pelos en la lengua” means to say things directly, honestly and sometimes impolitely, but here it also refers to the literal meaning, so yes, oral sex, as some people said before me. “My tongue doesn’t have hairs on it because you don’t want it to”, or something similar – too complicated English grammar for me in this case…
“Imos pa camiña or tes ganas de quentar a cama?” Shall we go beddy-bye or you feel like heating the bed up? (doesn’t change so much really)
“Ghastas pista?” Of course, it is an invitation to dance, as you say. If you want the literal meaning, gastar means to wear out and pista is a dancing floor.
Come on, the tanker truck one is quite obvious 😛
“Nena, quérote a tractoradas.” Puñado means fistful, cucharada means spoonful and tractorada means “tractorful” 😉 So this is something like “I have tractorfuls of love for you”.
“Nena, quen te pillara na horta do meu pai cunha perna en cada rego.” This “quen te pillara…” means “lucky he who could catch you”, or “I wish I could catch you”. I think it exists in Spanish as well, but I’m not sure. It’s similar to “quen for a rico” (I wish I were rich), etc. And a rego is a furrow – the line where you plant potatoes or whatever. Again, this is just a more accurate translation, but you explained the point correctly.
“Gustaríame comer a unha cuarta do teu embigo pra poder decirche, "Toma, este pelo es tuyo".” A cuarta is the same as a palmo, i.e. a handspan! I’d like to eat a handspan away from your navel so I could say, “here, this hair is yours”. Why is the last part in Spanish anyway? In Galician it would be: toma, este pelo é teu.
“Juapa! Bombón! Che comía, e para non cajarte, cosíame o cú!” It’s COMÍATE, not “che comía”! This is a horrible double mistake!! I don’t know who wrote this sentence for you but tell them off from me 😛
“Cotizas na Agraria.” Cotizar means to pay a tax or the public insurance (which after all is a tax) in relation to the amount of work you do. So the sense is exactly the opposite than what you say – to pay, not to charge. This Agraria thing is the agricultural union, or something similar. However I’d say this sentence should be a question (¿cotizas na Agraria?), but I’m not sure, I had never heard this one before.
“Se foses a miña nai, o meu pai ia ir durmir ao palleiro.” If you were my mum, dad would sleep in the barn. Who told you that masturbating thing? o.0
“Deus cho paghe”, or “Dios te lo pague” in Spanish, means “may God pay you for this”. It’s a way to say thanks, kind of an intense one. So nothing to do with flirting or sex.
“E ló ti qué?”, or more correctly “¿e logo ti que?”, means something like “so, what’s up with you?”. Logo here means then, but in the sense of “so”, not of “later”.
“Fuch fuch!” This onomatopeia what??? o.0 This is what farmers say to frighten hens or other animals away when you want to make them go where you want, and it’s pronounced like “foosh, foosh”. It comes from “fuxe”, the imperative of “fuxir”, i.e. flee (have in mind that X in Galician may sound like -ks- or like English –sh-, depending on the word). Maybe it’s used as a pickup line… but it sounds very strange to me!
I am a student of Translation and Interpretation, actually my main languages are English and Galician, and this took me a lot of time to write and research for the most accurate options, so I really hope it is useful and you, well, take it into consideration 🙂
90% of these sentences have long been used throughout Spain by simpleton peasants. Of course no educated person from neither the country nor any urban area would be dumb enough to seriously use them.
As previously stated by other guys the translation of "Nena, non teño pelos na lingua porque ti non queres" (in Spanish: "Nena, no tengo pelos en la lengua porque tú no quieres") is specially wrong. The idiom "to not have hair(s) in the tonge" means being very straight in whatever you say, speaking no-nonsense. So the sentence: "Babe, I don't have hair(s) in my tongue because you don't want that" has a double meaning and it's actually quite humourous in an alcoholic context.
I'm surprised not to see any girl's pickup lines in the same fashion, like "se me hace el chichi gaseosa" (my cunt is turning into soda). I'm not sure if there's a Galician equivalent of that one but there should be plenty.
Qué soberana gilipollez. En primer lugar el gallego no es una lengua que esté desapareciendo. En segundo lugar todas esas frases forman parte de una especie de listado de "frases graciosas" que se usan para bromear en conversaciones pero no para "ligar". Es como si alguien hace años hubiera escrito sobre el castellano y dijera que los españoles para ligar dicen "te voy a borrar el cerito sexuarrr". Pues algo similar. No sé quien lo ha escrito, pero desconoce completamente la realidad gallega.
.There's another nice play on words in "Nena, non teño pelos na lingua porque ti non queres." You translate it as "Girl, there's so much I'd like to say but won't, out of respect for you," but the literal translation is much juicier: "Girl, I don't have hairs on my tongue, because you don't want me to."
Great post! I really liked it and, as mentioned above, they are jokes, quite popular most of them. Regarding the translations, it's true that some of them are incomplete, and their main idea has been misunderstood. There is another one not commented regarding the potatoes:
Os teus si que son ollos, non os das patacas.
Yours really are eyes, and not those of potatoes.
For some reason this one is VERY famous.
The "eyes of a potato" are the buds that grow out of the potato and are used to seed the plant; the biggest the bud, the more probable you will obtain a big healthy plant (and hence more potatoes). It's popular because the potatoes are always present on the Galician menu.
I hope this helps you to understand why it's so popular 😉
Seica os pais do que escribiu este post eran irmáns e lles saíu o fillo tróspido.
Este é un claro exemplo dun rapaz tan parvo que non atopa o cú coas dúas mans.
Nada máis que engadir.
get more fucking and less blogging. It seems you need it. Such a poor perspective! Take gay friends and a heterosexual woman and write fron more perspectives than your sexist one!!! you loser! your blog is trash! it smells to frustration of not getting what you need.
Graciñas bohes. Estaría ben aclarar se ter pelos na lengua ten doble sentido en Inglés coma en galego. En galego cando alguén di "non teño pelos la lengua" está decindo que di as cousas á cara e directamente, por eso o gracioso da frase, que cando empeza parece que está falando d'outra cousa.
By the way, half of the expressions and vulgarity can be found in Asturias, too, especially after a few ciders… (e.g., préstasme is exactly the same: prestar = gustar + -me at the end). And you can find similar (rude) expressions in every rural part of Spain. As they say in mine, "Agujero con pelo, a jodelo" ("hole with hair, fuck it").
Just another nationalistic/sensationalistic/stereotype-y post to try to capture attention about Galicia. These or similar allegedly funny but vulgar and rude sentences do exist in every language, and Galicia is not a rural region full of rude assholes that use this kind of language, as the author seems to imply.
By the way, isn't it stupid that the first comment in an English post is written in Catalan, talking about similarities/differences between Galician/Catalan women? Oh yeah, nationalism + flirting. Is there a best way to capture attention?
This is ONLY AN EXAMPLE of Galicia, the very best of Spain:
http://www.turgalicia.es/sit/ficha_datos.asp?ordRs=7&ctre=3149&crec=35329&full=&cidi=E&premium=
AND PLEASE, SEE ALL OF THIS WEB AND CLOSE YOUR MOUTH, "ENGLISH WRITER":
http://www.turgalicia.es/default.asp?cidi=I
Nice try! If I had to write a similar post about South Korea I would probably make some mistakes too. That´s no reason to be so hard on the guy. Probably he knows that other parts of Spain have their own "particularities" too (La Hora Chanante is a great example) .
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Of course Galicia has much more to offer than cows and tractors, such as surf (the Spanish Federation is located in Ferrol), free public internet in some cities and rural areas, one of the oldest universities in Europe, the best Faculty of Mathematics in Spain and students and researchers in Harvard, Oxford and LSE. However, there´s nothing bad about recognizing that a considerable part of our heritage deals with sex and farms.
Another comment is that those expressions are still used as jokes today, and not only among men. For example, a girl can say: "Rapas, sabías que tes un aire que nin Dios a todos os que me ghustan a min?" (Boy, did you know that you fucking look like all the guys I like?). And "Préstasme" (I like you, I like you in the same way that I would feel after eating a bunch of tasty food).
LOL!! i'm a galician guy, and i've just "escachado da risa" (laughing a lot) with this article =D
nice work!! as some ppl said up there, there are some grammatical and translation errors, but is fine xDDD
also this: "Se che poño o pixo ás costas vas parecer un camión cisterna." ("If I put my dick in your backside, you'll look like a tanker truck."); realy have sense, as it shows how big that cock is =P
sorry my english gramar!
cheers!!
"Nena, non teño pelos na lingua porque ti non queres" in fact has a lliteral meaning. It means that he doesn´t have hairs in his tongue because she don´t want (until that moment, i suppose) him to have. It´s refering actually to an oral sex proposition that, as many readers may know, may you get a certain kind of hairs inside your mouth.
Nice post! 😀
But we use all that expressions as jokes, it's not our real life language XD
And disapearing?? More than a million people speak Galician…
It seems that the author of the post has never been in Galicia… because more than the half of the things written here are not true… It's sad that some foreigners have this concept of Galicia, a place that yes, is really green, with a lot of small villages and people that work in the country, but is not as described (i suggest you to go to A Coruña, Santiago de Compostela, Vigo, Ourense or any other city from Galicia to see what i mean). And another thing, galician is not a language mixed with spanish, is a language similar to spanish.
The kind of sentences that have been written here is used, yes, but there is this kind of sentences all around Spain, not only in Galicia, and there are even more "rural" sentences in some areas of Castilla la Mancha, for instance. Is better to get more information before writing about something, or at least would be nice to say that what you write is what you think or your personal opinion.
Regards.
I'm Galician and speak a bit of english so let me correct you:
E logho ti, de quen ves sendo? – So you…Whom are you from? (In reference to fathers
Deus cho paghe – God bless you.
E ló ti qué? – So/then… what about you? (This is hard to translate)
Se foses a miña nai, o meu pai ia ir durmir ao palleiro. > If you were my mother, my father would sleep in the shed.
Ghastas pista ou queres caña? > Do you run down/waste the floor or do you drink beer/want to fuck? (It's a polysemic way to ask 'Do you dance or do you drink?' with sex implications depending on the interpretation).
Really??????? After visiting Galicia that´s the most valuable thing you can find? You are suggesting that my mother tongue is a filthy bag of crap, and what your reduced mind wasn´t able to find out is the origin and the vast culture of "regueifas" and sarcastic songs angainst women and men which last till today and started with the muslim "jarchas" . Good God! If you read Quevedo´s jácaras what would you think about the Golden Period of Spanish literature. That´s true that Galicia is mostly a rural community but that´s no degradating the third part of US is rural as well. I advice you two things, first of all check with a Galician native speaker the translations there are many mistakes reated with traditions and cultural knowledge that you have overlooked, within this, try to recive your imput from the cultural nest that is elderly people not drunk teenagers, and second what you take for granted as typical Galician expressions of slang are insults mostly, as if "motherfucka" would be taken as a recognizable way of speaking between all Americans. Instead, one which I like and is also a hard one but completely Galician is "Vouche meter a fosa no puril" Please if you want sardonic Galician go and buy Retranca and simply rethink what you just said. Galician people weren´t rude an umpolite, but yes kind of elegantly spicy. Enough to say that I felt a bit offended, indeed. So, a rañala raparigo. (yes that´s Galician)
Great job! Looking forward to travel to Galicia and use some of them! Cheers
¡Se foses a miña nai, o meu pai ia ir durmir ao palleiro!,
means
If you were my mother my father would have to sleep in the BARN
Only one correction. I'm from Spain and we use the same lovely sentence in Spanish, I'm talking about the one that says "Nena, non teño pelos na lingua porque ti non queres". Actually, you should have translated in a literal way: "Babe, my tongue is not full of hairs just because you do not want to (let it have them)", I think you can imagine now what it means, it's actually much more naughty.
Lots of this saying are also said around Spain. Most of them are attributed to building workers.
not accurate translations for the funniest phrases that make laugh everybody by the old fashion way to displease girls with such a kind of coarse and rude expressions that are not used for flirt but to make angry girls. Its a kind of strategy to know what sense of humor girls have. Fortunately we live in a funny place where even the worst comments and the unpleasant blogs are welcome with a fine sense of humor, and not less irony, this kind of humor is not suitable for all cultures or dummies who try to get nirvana by insulting what they do not understand. You can travel a bit more to try to cover your ignorance if you can not learn more or get culture with other methods.
"Nena, non teño pelos na lingua porque ti non queres." "Girl, there's so much I'd like to say but won't, out of respect for you."
This is not accurate. It directly translates as "Girl, I don't have hairs in my tongue because you don't want me to", which is another way of saying "I wanna eat you out but you won't let me".
@Marcos, so noted; fixed. Thanks.
There seem to be a lot of differing opinions on these translations and meanings of a few of these phrases but I do intend to get to the bottom of this!
Hi! Nice post! Just one thing, the language of Galicia in English it's not Gallego, it's Galician language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_language. Also, you're using some dialects which are not used all over the region/county
All this phrases are for joking or sometimes are used in man to man conversations, its riskly use it with a woman. There are some errors in the translations:
.Tes uns ollazos que me matan.-Your eyes are killing me- You have nice eyes
E vou, e bótoche o veleno todo ali. -I'll come, and dump all my poison up in there.-Change poison for cum.
Nena, non teño pelos na lingua porque ti non queres.- I don't have hair in my tongue, cause you dont want- If you let me, i gonna eat your pussy.
Se che poño o pixo ás costas vas parecer un camión cisterna. If I put my dick in your backside, you'll look like a tanker truck.- Fuck me, I've a very big dick
Nena, quérote a tractoradas.- Baby, I love you as big as a tractor load- I love you so much.
Gustaríame comer a unha cuarta do teu embigo pra poder decirche, "Toma, este pelo es tuyo".- I'd like to eat one handspan away of your bellybutton so that then I could tell you, "Look, this hair is yours."- Invitation to make her oral sex.
Cotizas na Agraria? – You pay to Agraria?- Do you have a pension plan?
Había ser raro que non saíra eu coa cara tapada polo pelo. It would be strange not to come out of this without my face covered in hair.- Her pubic hair
Se foses miña nai, meu pai ia ir durmir ao palleiro.-If you were my mother, my father would sleep in the barn. – I'll fuck you although we were family.
Nena es máis potente cun tractor con turbo.- Girl, you're more powerful than a turbocharged tractor.- You're so pretty/hot
I want to explain some examples for understanding our way to laugh on things. In Galicia we have a television network that broadcasts movies dubbed in our language, and we are proud of the way we laugh at all, we have a language that sounds casual, so epic phrases like "i 'll be back" almost become EPIC parodies simply by the way we talk. This humor is extrapolated to many things, includying flirting, but always becoming a joke.
@Miguel if you answer what you said, then, you're no true Galician… a true Galician wouldn't answer your way, but this one:
-Hey, Miguel. Is it truth that Galicians are like blahblahblah?"
– I don't know… Are we?
Galician people have a very great sense of humor, we are very funny and happy, so this sentences are just one way to laugh, we use a lot of disgusting and funny terms for making jokes all the time. Of course Galicia is a rural area but I can tell you i've not seen a "palleiro" or "rego" in years (because i'm from one city) lol we use that sentences anyway!! just for fun 🙂
sorry for my bad english 😉
Mira, Miguel, eu tamén son de aldea e levo toda a miña vida vivindo nela. Nin eu, nin os meus familiares nin os meus amigos utilizamos nunca ningunha desas frases co propósito que este tío describe aquí. Só se usan para facer bromas, ou para pinta-la mona, nunca co propósito de ligar. Está describindo unha realidade galega totalmente inexistente deixándonos a nós de parvos e tirando a nosa cultura polo chan. Despois vén xente coma ti disculpándose e as de dios. Eu, de verdade, non entendo ós galegos. Temos o que nos merecemos, por gilipollas, por baixa-la cabeciña diante dos de fóra. Sempre seremo-la última merda mentras nos sigamos axeonllando deste xeito diante dos de fóra.
Graza galegos/as for your comments. I've added a follow-up above, at the end of the article.
Y que quede claro que fuch fuch no es gallego, sino una "onomatopeya" graciosa (eso sí) que salió de la imaginación de un adorable borracho gallego, nada más.
First,as a Galician I have to say that your view from here it´s a sterotype from people who think that came from a better and developed country. Galicia it´s not only agriculture, we have beatiful cities and Galician lenguage it´s not disspearing, even young people in cities speak it, cause is our symbol of identity. It really piss me off that from Europe only Barcelona and famous cities have the cool way. And this is not a way for fuck of course, that expressions r ussed sometimes for jocking between friends. So please, get more information before writting !
Galician has more speakers than catalán!
Disappearing tongue??? Really???
"Galicia, a mostly rural area in the northwest of the Iberian peninsula" Of course, I was born in the middle of the field! in fact, I'm discovering internet today, cause, you know, we have no developed cities and electric here!
PLEASE, make us a favor and stop to write this kind of crap.
BTW, this sentences are only for joke, it's not a real way to flirt, as you are saying here.
Well, this is presented like a matter of fact, and actually It isnt. As a Galician there is a couple of things i need to say. Also like an Anthropologist and someone like (more or less) know its own culture. I mean, you can say this kind of things, and there is two possible outcomes; 1) you get a fist in your face. 2) You both laugh and start over a conversation knowing that, at least, both have sense of humor. Even the people that make this in the most serious way, the dont really mean that (at least nowadays) and this kind of expressions are just jokes to be made. If not, why Miguel would laugh instead just wonder why this is suprising for someone? You may know this lines, but as a Galician, you would never use it in a real environment when you really want to have any chance with a girl. And yeah, say that It is a word in galician for the sound of the fingers sliding in and out of the vagina… Its a huge, risky and irreal step. As you may know, as a person that can speak many lenguages, the speakers are creative and every day lot of persons just made up lots of expresions, jokes, lenguages… I remember perfectly when that video comes out, it was kind of viral on its time, and everybody knows precisely cause the guy was very funny invented things. The fact is, if you come to Galicia and ask to somebody wichi is the sound in galician to that, everybody is going to see you like if you were a crazy person.
Well, once said that, there is some translations in the text that are absolutely fails. One of the worst; "If you were my mother, my father would fall asleep masturbating." Doesnt make sense at all. "Palleiro" is the place where the straw is and the translation should be something like "If you were my mother, my father would fall asleep in the barn" No meaning of masturbation imply or explicit.
This one "Nena, non teño pelos na lingua porque ti non queres." is refering literally to oral sex, nothing to do with the "ter pelos na lingua" lenguage than literally means say something wrong about someone, or more exactly, dont have control about what is socially acceptable to say or not about other persons. So, a better translation would be something like "Baby, i have no hair in my tongue cause you dotn want me to have it" and hair would be, litterally, a cunt hair.
Also, "Deus cho paghe" is the first time on my life I listen it refering to sex. Is just a common expresion to say "thank you", very close to "god bless you" in english actually.
I dont mean to underestimate your job, but if what you want is make a rigorous description this is totally in the wrong direction.
Hey, friend. I don't think anybody is making fun of anybody's motherland here.
I've lived all my life (and still) in Galicia and I can say that, if this stuff is not everyday's vocabulary and behavior for the regular galician youth (not the least), there is a big part of realism in this compilation. This, my friends, happens. I've seen it and hear it.
Regardless of the content of this article, it's a bit childish to feel offended by stereotypes. Yeah, sure people living in the far away big city know very lil' about life and culture in lil' rural villages. But also, life in rural areas is not always like eco-products-ads picture on the TV, green fields, fresh air, nice homely people and only you and the peaceful nature.
I love my country and its people, and becouse I love em I can recognize its virtues and its defects (its lovely defects). When some "foreign" guy says: "-Hey, Miguel. Is it truth that Galicians are like blahblahblah?" I answer: "-Hahahaha. Yeah, we do that."
And that, my friends, is why you shouldn't give a fuck about stereotypes of countries.
This is nothing but a lot of stupid stereotypes written by a "cool" guy living in the "cool" Barcelona talking shit about a "not so cool" place. If you would have written shit about people from other parts of Spain or even from parts of Catalonia they would, of course, defend themselves from the shit you would write abou them, not like galicians do. In Galicia we are so stupid that we start to apologize and give credit to the shit that foreign people talk about us.
Great compilation!
I'm from Galicia and I already knew most of the lines here, some others are new to me. But everyone of them make me feel embarrased and lmao equally. I suppose that for most of the foreign readers these expressions may sound terribly offensive, disgusting or unbelievable, but in the deep rural areas around here, where everybody (even girls) is raw and… rural, this is part of youth everyday pickup slang.
xef, xef? xof, xof? xif, xif? xif, xef? xef, xof? etc.?
Good point. But what do you propose calling this sound in Catalan? It clearly needs its own word.
Interessantíssim! Que dur que deu ser el seu treball de camp, amb tants tractors, vaques i arades.
Curiosament, l'onomatopeia enamoradora en terres catalanes: "fuig, fuig" (del verb fugir) = "go away, go away". Però, bé, malgrat la diferència d'intencions, alguna cosa em diu que el resultat de dir-ho a una gallega deu ser el mateix que el de dir-ho a una catalana…