New Words #29: Yet More Things You Need to Know

(but don’t know you need to know)

I’m getting ready to share a song with some of my high school Spanish students—a song I first heard at a concert in 2006—and it reminds me of a very useful phrase that I recall hearing for the first time that same evening.

I was studying that summer at a university on the northern coast of Spain, and my classmate Laura and I had made friends with a few locals who were taking classes there to improve their English. One evening, we’d made dinner plans with our new friend Sara, but when she came to campus to meet us, she asked if we’d rather drive half an hour away to see a new pop group, El Sueño de Morfeo, giving a free concert on the beach.

Obviously, we said yes. But we also wanted to know how she’d found out about the concert. We’d been trying our hardest to stay informed about events in the area, and neither of us Lauras had heard about this!

“Hay que saber,” Sara said with a shrug. You’ve just got to know.

Her choice of phrase stuck with me because I’d been feeling, ever since my arrival in Spain, that there were an awful lot of things I was just supposed to know. For example, on the first day of class, all my North American classmates and I unwittingly insulted our instructor by addressing her using the formal usted rather than the informal tú. We’d all been taught—and I’d experienced in France—that it’s better to start off extra polite with strangers when using a language that draws such a distinction. But for our instructor, who comes from a place where even high school students are welcome to address teachers informally (and by their first names!), our use of usted put distance between her and us. It suggested we were unfriendly—or, worse, that we’d perceived her as unwelcoming. (She wasn’t! She was a lovely person! We figured things out right away!)

I’ve talked here before about the cultural questions we don’t know to ask and about the perils of assuming simple forms of address translate easily from one language to another. So you’ll understand how happy I was when, after I shared my usted debacle with a class recently, my students had a whole bunch of questions about aspects of cultural etiquette that it hadn’t occurred to me to teach.

A Humble Suggestion

In each newsletter, I’ll offer at least one recommendation for your reading, watching, or listening pleasure.

KAOS, a dark comedy featuring a track suit–clad Jeff Goldblum as Zeus and Janet McTeer as Hera, had a great first season. It’s set in a modern-ish world and has a wild plot involving three ordinary humans unwittingly involved in Prometheus’s long-simmering plot to exact revenge upon Zeus. Fair warning to the squeamish: KAOS is pretty gory at times. Then again, so is Greek mythology. Netflix has yet to make a decision about a potential Season Two, so if you’ve been meaning to get around to watching this one, do that soon and give the numbers a boost.

Here, Look at My Cats

For what it’s worth, here they are: my cats.

An oldie but a goodie.

Laura