Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Camarón vs Gamba

Once again, I was stuffing my face with my Spanish amigos (I'm surprised I don't weigh 400lbs by now!), and mi amiga de España taught me a new word - Gamba.

Gamba is apparently the word you need to order shrimp in Spain. I say that you need this word, because she went on to tell me that the word camarón (or camarónes) isn't used in Spain. To be exact, she said no one in Spain will know what you're talking about. Hopefully she was exaggerating, but if she wasn't, at least now you'll be prepared.

As I delved a little deeper into the subject I also got an education on shrimp. It seems that all shrimp are not created equal, and neither are their names:

Langostino: King prawn
Gamba: Prawn
Camarón: Shrimp

I'll leave you to discover the differences between them. As for me, all I need to know is how to ask the waiter to bring me these tasty creatures on a plate.

Nomás

A few days ago I was having lunch in a Mexican restaurant, chatting with one of the meseras (waitresses) . She was a Hondureña, a woman from the Honduras. We weren't talking about much of anything, just some friendly chit-chat. She asked me where I was from, and after answering, I asked her why, and she answered "nomás".

Nomás is a simple word with many uses. It's a contraction for nada más, literally translated "no more". But like many words in Spanish, it has colloquial meanings as well, such as "just" or "that's it". You can read about the various usages at WordReference. But in this case, it means "just wondering", or "just asking".

Now, you could say something like "me estaba preguntando" or "solo me estaba preguntando". There's also "nada, curiosidad", which is something like "no reason, just curious", but personally I like nomás. It's certainly less of a mouthful than the first two alternatives, and a heck of a lot easier to remember.

This is a nice bit of Spanish to put in your bag of tricks, making you sound more a little bit more like a native. Experiment with it, and have fun.

¡Hasta la próxima!