Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 January 11

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January 11

Is "engagement" just the modern term of the archaic "betrothal"?

I hardly hear anyone use the term "betrothal" nowadays. Most of the time, people use the term "betrothal" in stories that take place in earlier times, which I conveniently replace with "engagement". How did "betrothal" fall into disuse? Most of the time, in modern English, people would say, "I'm going to get married," or "I'm engaged," or even "I'm going to tie the knot." SSS (talk) 06:29, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Based on our article, it seems that betrothal was/is more "official", and often organized/arranged by the couple's families. Iapetus (talk) 09:33, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

SuperSuperSmarty -- Engagement is the modern equivalent of betrothal, but in many cultures betrothal was a binding agreement which had far more consequences than a modern engagement. In Old Testament times, from what appears in the Bible, most of the heavy lifting (negotiations between the two families) was done at the time of the betrothal, and if a betrothed woman had sex with someone other than the man she was betrothed to, then she was already guilty of adultery. In fact there seems to be more emphasis on betrothals than weddings; probably in some cases if the betrothed man and woman had sex, and the betrothed woman went to live with the husband's family, and they accepted her, then that was the wedding (the Hebrew word כלה which is conventionally translated "bride" also meant "daughter-in-law", with the implication of one who has recently come to live with her husband's family, and "young married woman"). There may have been some kind of wedding ceremony, but it wasn't really described in the Old Testament (though there is the "royal wedding psalm", Psalm 45)... AnonMoos (talk) 09:44, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Hence also the term Breach of promise. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:14, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

• No. If I need to splain beyond what WP, Wiktionary, Google, Webster's, EO, and Oxford all give, don't bother to ping me--I'll just ignore it. μηδείς (talk) 13:44, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

• μηδείς, did you mean to put this comment in the engagement-v-betrothal section? Nyttend backup (talk) 14:56, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

• I did type that, but it may have been a cut and paste error, it doesn't seem to belong here. μηδείς (talk) 19:41, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Los Tres Calaveras

In the comments section to this 1960s Mexican movie "Los Tres Calaveras" someone wrote: "¡Ah cabrón, que chingones le salen los corridos a Javier Solís!" Can someone translate? Is it that Javier Solís is not known for singing corridos? Were they referring to something in the movie? (I haven't watched it yet but Javier Solís seems to only appear in the very beginning and the very end of the movie). Thanks. Basemetal 17:10, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

"Cabrón" is an expletive, like "shithead" or "asshole". "Chingones" is a more virulent expletive like "fuckers", but used in a positive way. My spanish is a bit rusty, but I'm pretty up on my swearwords (being a U.S. schoolteacher). My best shot (and this is with my less-than-perfect spanish that someone will be along to correct) is that in English this would be "Ah, shit! What fucking genius brought out the Javier Solis songs!" --Jayron32 19:25, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

I can't come up with a literal translation, but this reads to me as, "Dude, his shit is da bomb!" The impersonal use of the verb is pretty much untranslatable, but it is more at "what incredible songs come out of Javier" Le and a Javier refer to the singer as if he were the object, and salen, being plural, refers to the songs as the plural subject.

You run into very weird things like "Se me rompio el brazo." Literally that would be "The arm broke me itself" but the sense is I got my arm broken (passively, not by a third party, and not on purpose), or better "My arm broke on me." Another analogy would be, What fuckin eggs come out of that chicken, which is a bit easier to grok in English. μηδείς (talk) 02:31, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

So "chingones" is here actually an adjective meaning "incredibly good" and refers to the "corridos", and is not a noun that would be the subject of "salen" (the subject of "salen" actually being the "corridos"): is that correct? Could you also say "los corridos le salen chingones a Javier", meaning "Javier comes up with incredibly good corridos"? Basemetal 02:49, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Sort of. The best English translation in terms of sense would be "fucking brilliant" in the British sense. Chingon and related words are vulgar, and lack a direct English translation, but their use usually indicates a positive attitude. --Jayron32 05:19, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Ah cabrón, ¡qué chingones! (Oh man, what badasses!) —Stephen (talk) 23:05, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

A slight nitpick. chingon (literally "big fuck") is not an adjective here, but a predicate nominative. The looser word order confuses the English speaker. We would say his ballads come out such masterpieces. The Spanish order ignoring the vulgarity is "what masterpieces they come out the ballads of Solis. μηδείς (talk) 17:20, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

• BTW, I did run this past my English-speaking native Spanish informant, who agreed entirely with my analysis. μηδείς (talk) 17:20, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

See informant (linguistics). μηδείς (talk) 02:08, 16 January 2018 (UTC)