Sexy Spanish Words and Sleep Deprivation


I’ve been failing to exercise this week, which may be because of that 12 kilometre run last Sunday, the ruination of my knees and mind for a few days. I’ve been dragging myself out of bed, feeling just as tired as when I went to sleep, and although I’ve been able to jam a few more bits of Spanish vocabulary into my brain, I’ve been in no state to go for a run.

"You’re jetlagged" somebody at work told me. I refrained from telling her that you’re not allowed to get jet lag in Asia, you have to suck it up and muscle through with as much coffee as you can stand. Because that wouldn’t be right; I’m denying myself coffee at the moment for fear it will makes things worse. But if I was jet lagged, surely I’d feel awake at some point in the day, rather than lobotomised throughout?

Fortunately, learning Spanish is a lot easier than running. Sometimes. For example, if you decide to learn words about sexuality, and discover that the Spanish word for "sexy" is "sexy". Which is nice, as it shows a certain awe for English people that I hadn’t previously expected from our Iberian friends. Not like the French, forever referring to "the English disease", which could be necrophilia, bestiality, pederasty, homosexuality or drinking too much tea, depending on what out Gallic chums were going to accuse the British of next.

As it happens, the Spanish word for "gay" is "gay". Which seems to imply that the Spanish only find English people sexy, and also that they don’t believe there are any gay Spaniards, otherwise they’d have their own word for it. Maybe they’re all rambunctious heterosexuals in Spain, who spend their time so secure in their sexualities that they think nothing of dressing up in funny little jackets and stabbing bulls to death, whereas the English, with their cold weather and boarding schools are driven to guy-on-guy action. And yet the Spaniards still find the English "sexy". (Which is the word "sexy" but spoken in a Spanish accent.) Sexy and homosexual in equal measure. Are they sexy despite, or because, their being gay? It’s a little bit confusing.

(There is another option, which is that the Spanish language app I’m using was coded by somebody who is particularly lazy and instead of putting in any Spanish words, they’re just pretending the translations of every word are the same in both languages.)

I changed subject and started learning words for tropical things. I now know how to say "tropics" in Spanish and thankfully it’s not just "los tropics", because if it had been I would probably have flung my phone across the room. And when you’re living in una zona tropical you should conserve your energy by keeping phone flinging to a minimum.

Although … Phone flinging must have some health benefit. If not just that it weans you off an addiction to touch screens, there’s some aerobic value to constantly chucking light pieces of electronic equipment around the room. Maybe if I got angry enough at my phone, frequently enough, I would get enough exercise and wouldn’t need to run. Problem solved?


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