{"id":8600,"date":"2005-09-30T08:52:53","date_gmt":"2005-09-30T15:52:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2005\/09\/30\/embarrassed.html"},"modified":"2005-09-30T08:52:53","modified_gmt":"2005-09-30T15:52:53","slug":"embarrassed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/09\/30\/embarrassed.html","title":{"rendered":"Embarrassed"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I’ve been noticing this bus stop bench ad which asks, “PREGNANT? EMBARAZADA?<\/em>” Which set me to thinking … does the Spanish word for “pregnant” really fundamentally mean “embarrassed” (as I started applying all sorts of cultural stereotypes about stodgy \/ traditionalist \/ Catholic Spaniards)?<\/p>\n

Well, not really. There are some amusing stories<\/a> one can hear about this false cognate between the two languages, but there is, ultimately, a common root<\/a> between the two terms which is only metaphorical to either connection.<\/p>\n

It is an important characteristic of linguistic borrowing that once a word is ‘borrowed’ into a language, it becomes the possession of that language and its meanings can be changed to suit that language. Even though a word may be borrowed with its meaning intact, with time, words that once meant the same thing in the languages of both borrower and lender drift apart, meanings are dropped, new nuances are added; the words take on an individual life of their own. For example, embarrassed <\/em>and embarazada <\/em>came, ultimately, from the same root. Italian imbarrare, <\/em>meaning ‘to surround with bars’ gave rise to imbarrazzare, <\/em>which became French embarrasser <\/em>and Spanish embarazar, <\/em>meaning ‘to hamper or impede’, and these in turn passed into English — embarrassed.<\/em><\/p>\n

The original meaning of embarrassed <\/em>is partly retained in the more old-fashioned sense of ‘in a difficult situation’ and is mainly used to talk euphemistically about financial difficulties. Feeling awkward or disconcerted is now the most frequent sense in English. Meanwhile, the Spanish verb embarazar <\/em>has retained the original hamper or obstruct sense, but has the additional meaning of to make a woman pregnant. The adjective which is derived from this has only the pregnant sense. Embarazoso <\/em>is the word to use to translate the English adjective embarrassed.<\/em><\/p>\n

See? This is the sort of language stuff I love — two words that really mean two different things, but that wound their own separate ways from another word whose meaning you can still see in both.<\/p>\n

(For the record, a number of other sources indicate that avergonzado <\/em>is a better to word to use for “embarrassed” in Spanish.)<\/p>\n

At any rate, regarding my particular fondness for lexical trivia, I refuse to be embarrassed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I’ve been noticing this bus stop bench ad which asks, “PREGNANT? EMBARAZADA?” Which set me to thinking … does the Spanish word for “pregnant” really fundamentally mean “embarrassed” (as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-and-language"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":129649,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/02\/05\/when-you-have-official-language-police-things-can-get-ugly.html","url_meta":{"origin":8600,"position":0},"title":"When you have Official Language Police, things can get ugly","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 5-Feb-16 11:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The French are known for being ... um ... determined to intentionally maintain the purity of their tongue, to officially deprecate word imports in favor of their own native words, etc.But that sort of sentiment can draw flak when the government officially makes changes to the language.'French linguistic purists have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":127891,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/09\/05\/the-campaign-against-midget.html","url_meta":{"origin":8600,"position":1},"title":"The campaign against "midget"","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 5-Sep-15 1:26am","format":false,"excerpt":"So this was an interesting article about an effort by \"Little People of America\" to change the nomenclature the USDA uses about raisin classification from using the term \"midget.\" And the article notes:The term is offensive to little people, who view it as a slur. They won\u2019t even say it.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":46228,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/04\/translating-words-across-europe.html","url_meta":{"origin":8600,"position":2},"title":"Translating words across Europe","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 4-Nov-14 4:19pm","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a very spiffy little site. Enter in an English word, and see the most common translated word in a variety of European nations. Originally shared by +Yonatan Zunger: Here's an interesting site, via +Laura Gibbs: it uses Google Translate to show you the translations of any word across\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":136826,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/06\/23\/letters-and-alphabets.html","url_meta":{"origin":8600,"position":3},"title":"Letters and Alphabets","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 23-Jun-18 4:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"We take writing and language for granted, but there's remarkable history and variability in how it's all constructed across time and space with humanity, and even large variation today -- not just in language, but in how we convey it in writing. Originally shared by +Yonatan Zunger: This is a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/DgM74CBV4AE3cXb.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/DgM74CBV4AE3cXb.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/DgM74CBV4AE3cXb.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":128453,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/28\/words-mean-things-civil-war-edition.html","url_meta":{"origin":8600,"position":4},"title":"Words Mean Things (Civil War Edition)","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 28-Oct-15 5:02am","format":false,"excerpt":"Language evolves and changes. Words get worn down over time, or drift and find new meanings. Old word stop meaning what they used to. Or sometimes our understanding of words changes, and what was acceptable becomes fraught, for reasons serious or silly.That said, I'm always a bit leery of intentional\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128325,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/15\/how-mcdonalds-changed-the-english-language.html","url_meta":{"origin":8600,"position":5},"title":"How McDonald's changed the English language","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 15-Oct-15 9:18pm","format":false,"excerpt":"According to this article ...http:\/\/logophilius.blogspot.com\/2015\/10\/how-mcdonalds-marketing-made-us-grimace.html... until the early\/mid-1970s, \"grimace\" was pronounced \"grih-MAYS\" (rhymes with \"face\"). But when McDonald's introduced \"The Evil Grimace\" to their McDonaldLand commercials, they chose to pronounce it \"GRIM-miss\" -- which pronunciation stuck (probably given the fact that it's not a word that's spoken aloud very often).[http:\/\/mcdonalds.wikia.com\/wiki\/Grimace]And,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}