When Incorrect Spanish Is The Preferred Spanish

The sentence deconstructed here will illustrate Mexican colloquialism, the Spanish preterit conjugation of an irregular verb, and a demonstrative pronoun, all at once. For anyone learning Spanish, deconstructing simple sentences and reviewing them whenever possible is always way better than mugging up lists of Spanish words with their out-of-context meanings. We’ll also see here, how deliberately violating those rules of grammar and using incorrect vocabulary creatively could get you in the league of native speakers quickly. Obviously, there must be some method to this madness otherwise you run the risk of sounding naïve.

The sentence

Let’s see what we got here today; here’s the sentence in question along with its English translation in parentheses:

Todos los meseros fueron a la fiesta del cumple de su capi. (All waiters went to the head waiter’s birthday party.)

Before we begin our reverse engineering with this sentence, let’s stress again the importance of steering clear of rote memorization at all times and at all cost. The concept must soak into you gradually and naturally and be a part of your natural linguistic inventory. Only then can you ever reap any tangible benefit from all the efforts you ever invested in learning Spanish. Let’s start the autopsy now.

The nuts and bolts

Todos – This word, simply put, stands for the English “all”. However, there’s a twist. While the English word exists solely in one universal form regardless of context, todos doesn’t. First things first, todo is masculine while toda is feminine. That one’s a no-brainer but what about todos, then? What can possibly be the singular of “all”? Well, first of all, todo is used only with singular nouns and gives a sense of “whole”. So, toda la clase would mean “the whole class” and todo el mundo, “the whole world”. Now, in the same vein, todos goes with plural nouns and means “all” in the sense of several things or people taken together. For example, todos los libros means “all the books” and todos mis perros means “all my dogs”. Coming back to our sentence, the noun in question is masculine plural and hence takes todos.

los meseros – Los is simple to explain. This Spanish equivalent of the English article, “the”, goes with masculine plurals in situations as dictated by Spanish grammar which is not always the same as those applicable for its English counterpart. Los becomes el when followed by a masculine singular, la when followed by a feminine singular, and las when followed by a feminine plural. Mesero is a waiter so that makes meseros, more than one waiter obviously. Hence, in this sentence, the phrase, todos los meseros (all the waiters) forms the subject.

fueron – We are already familiar with the Spanish verb, ir (to go) and its present indicative conjugations. Well, never mind those heavy-duty, utterly useless, grammatical terms but the only intent behind those names being used here is to ease identification or reference. No need to memorize what they mean. Anyways, what we are seeing here is the form ir takes when used with third person plural subjects in the past tense; more precisely, when the action has been performed only once and completed in the past. Spanish grammar calls this the preterit form. If we were talking about just one waiter, el mesero, the fueron would have reduced to fue. Incidentally, both ir and ser share the same conjugations in their preterite forms; so, while in this sentence fueron means “went”, it might as well mean “were”. Needless to say, it’s the context that dictates which interpretation flies.

Fiesta time!!!
Photo credit: Municipio Piñas licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

a – While the Spanish a can take several interpretations depending on the context, it means “to” in this one. Don’t worry about other meanings as you will get them as and when you come across each of the several idiomatic expressions that use it.

la fiesta – La is the Spanish “the” for feminine nouns and it won’t hurt to believe that most English speakers would be familiar with fiesta. You guessed it right, it’s a “party”!!!

del – De is the Spanish for “of” and el is the Spanish for “the”; whenever the two come together, they become del, the Spanish for “of the”. Note, however, that this contraction only works with singular masculine nouns; de and la never merge, nor do de and los or de and las.

cumple – This is one of those words using which can make the difference between a native speaker and one who has spent months in the classroom learning Spanish. Your dictionary tells you that the Spanish for “birthday” is cumpleaños, which is why, feliz cumpleaños figures among the first few phrases in every dime-store phrasebook. However, cumpleaños becomes cumple in unofficial local lingo and you will obviously sound way more “native” if you use this grammatically incorrect contraction in your speech!

Cumpleaños often becomes cumple in Mexican Spanish
Photo credit: Mario Sánchez Bueno licensed CC BY-SA 2.0

de su capi – De (of) needs no introduction but su does. Su, in this context, stands for “their”; depending on context, it can also mean “her”, “its”, “his”, or even “your” (the polite form). This word takes a singular noun while for plurals, the word becomes sus. Capi is a Mexican slang for captain used in the same way as “cappy” is in English. In this context, it kind of indicates the “head waiter”. The correct word in Spanish, though, is capitán but the incorrect contraction, capi, not found in any dictionary nor approved by any grammar book, is what gets you the ticket to the inner-circle of native speakers! To summarize, de su capi, put together, mean, “of their captain” or, “of their head waiter”.

It would be reasonable to assume that you don’t really need any assistance with the word-order in this relatively straightforward sentence. Still, should there be any confusion stringing these nuts and bolts together, feel free to drop in a comment and we could try to make it a cakewalk for you.