El rincón idiomático – No WAY!?

15 Dec

“Way, Garth”. Please forgive my tasteless reference to 90’s cinema but after posting the title I just HAD to write that. Now, I’m not sure if what I’m going to explain to you is exactly accurate but there is an expression I’ve heard over and over again here in Argentina. When you hear it you probably will realize that, based on one word, that it is likely unique to Argentina (and perhaps Uruguay).  This is the ubiquitous expression ¡Mirá vos!

Of course, the vos part tells you that it’s likely Argentine and when I tell you that EVERYONE uses it here, I mean everyone.  It doesn’t mean “Look, you”… that doesn’t sound too good even in English.  It seems that people here use it to mean the equivalent of the title of my post, “No way”,  “Wow!”, “Imagine that!” or even “check that out! or “Go figure?”… something of that ilk.  They’ll say it when you tell them something that surprises them or astonished them or something.  It also might imply, “what you did/are doing is awesome” so I guess it could kind of imply our slangy “Look at YOU!” I recall learning and hearing no me digas in Spain quite a bit and in Italy they have an expression Ah, però which has a similar meaning.  However, the ¡mirá vos¡ seems to be so common that I’m surprised I haven’t mentioned it before. Feel free and let me know, by the way, if I’m inerpreting this incorrectly but seems right to me.

I wonder if the Wayne’s world line was translated this way…. NOT!

Prof Rabner

 

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