Prestame La Pistola

My brother-in-law Douglas just came into my office and said "prestame la pistola". That's "loan me the pistol". I made a funny face. He pointed. Ok, he wanted to borrow my soldering iron. It is not a soldering gun. Now, I do have a hot glue pistol but that wasn't the subject.

I think this is just Nicaraguan Spanish. Yesterday, Ana was commenting that "los protectores" were in the stairs. Another funny face by me. She clarified, "protectores para mujeres". That got me thinking about what sort of things women had for protection and, beyond that, what ones could be on the stairs with the implication that the dog put them there. This, like the "pistola" got clarified—she was talking about a package of Kotex panty liners.

This happens all the time. I know a lot of Spanish words that Ana doesn't know. She knows a lot more that would fit into regular conversation but I know names of construction parts, electrical fittings, car parts and such. Or, that is, I know the Nicaraguan name. For example, I recently learned that the weather head for an electrical service entrance is a "mufa". I used to know the Spanish word but that isn't useful here.

Ana's family is poor. So, to put "pistola" in perspective, where Douglas lives there are zero "pistolas". The need for more specific language just isn't there. On the other hand, Douglas is smart. (For example, he just returned the "pistola" and explained that someone he know threw away his Sony earphones because a wire broke and that they cost C$180. So, Douglas fixed them.)

I don't think I am trying to "fix something" here, just make an observation that an interesting new language is developing here that includes a lot of non-descript descriptions plus Spanglish such "folder" (that's Nicaraguan Spanglish for carpeta which is Spanish for folder) and se renta. All in all, it is usually amusing.