posted
I'm more inclined to go with Altariel's version. Unattached to another word, it just means "little fat one (feminine)," not necessarily "little fat girl." Paired with a feminine noun, it becomes "little fat (whatever feminine noun)." Of course, most people would translate it as "little fat girl" just because for most people it doesn't make sense to associate gender with other things (the odd part of Spanish and such having gender specific nouns and adjectives and such).
EDIT: I'm not a native Spanish speaker though. I just had four years of Spanish a few years back. That's how I'm basing my translation and how I'm discussing it.
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I am in total agreement with you, Alt. I just wanted to point out that there seems to be discrepancy between what it actually means and what many people take it to mean.
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quote:Originally posted by pH: You were the best thing ever to come to Taco Bell. Let us all have a moment of silence for the cheesy gordita crunch. 'cause I can't find a Taco Bell that sells them anymore. Can you?
quote:Originally posted by Altáriël of Dorthonion:
quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk: No, actually, I'd say a direct translation is "little fat girl." Spanish is very gender specific.
Pardon me asking, but are you a native spanish speaker? If so, from where?
I'm asking because I just have to disagree with your post.
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico to a Spaniard father (who happens to be a professional translator) and a Cuban mother, and have lived in Miami for the past 30+ years.
So, in a nutshell, yes.
In this sense, I think the term "gorda" doesn't refer to "fat" but rather "big", but for argument's sake let's put context aside and use a literal translation.
*WARNING* The following use of the term "feminine" and "masculine" refer only to the language syntax and in no way reflect gender preference to any of the products mentioned. Thank you for your cooperation.
"Gorda" is the female form of "fat", whereas "gordo" is the male form of it. Adding the "-ita" makes it diminutive female, whereas adding "-ito" would make it diminutive male.
So, in my opinion, "gordita" directly translates to "small fat female". Granted, it's referring to an arguably femenine product (be it an enchilada, chalupa, etc...), as is the nature in Spanish that every word is considered male or female (there are exceptions, yes; humor me). The only masculine Mexican food I can think of is a taco, and a "taco gordita" is simply wrong, whereas it should be a "taco gordito", but that's arguably irrelevant.
There is no genderless "one" in Spanish, and if so the masculine form is used, but at that point it's personal preference. For example, "someone" or "something" can translate to "algun", "alguno" or "alguna". Which you use is really a coin flip (or a four-sided die, as the case may be).
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my friends and i always were able to ask for a cheesy gordita crunch even when it isn't on the menu. it's like a secret brotherhood or something.
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i brought this up in my spanish class. My professor, who is from Ecuador, assuming that maybe could make a difference in translation. agrees that it should mean "little fat girl"
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Since this thread has been started I have eaten 7 cheesy gordita crunches. I have had no problem ordering them at my local taco bell. Every time I see this thread I crave them.
Please stop bumping this! It is ruining my healthy and my pocket book.
*sneaks away form work to get my 8th and possibly 9th CGC*
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I didn't follow Nighthawk's last post, but I will agree with him insofar as the absence of a noun being modified makes "gordita" not an adjective. Further, we do tend to describe people with an adjective only, whereas we don't do things with other nouns. "El ciego" "La vieja" "El gordo" "Un borracho" Ciego, vieja, gordo, and borracho are all adjectives, but without an accompanying noun, it is understood we are referring to a person possessing this trait. And so if I heard someone use the word "gordita" all by itself without any clarifying context, the natural assumption would be that he or she is referring to a fat little girl. However, I will agree with Altįriėl insofar as when you order a "Gordita," you are not in any way ordering a little fat girl. The context makes it clear that the adjective is meant to describe the food item.
-o-
It's basically the same issue in JFK's "ich bin ein Berliner" speech. Many people claim that he referred to himself as a jelly donut. Well, not really. It's true (from what I've been told, since I don't speak German) that in German, as in with Spanish, you would not use an article when using a linking verb to describe yourself, so it would have been more correct for him to say "ich bin Berliner," and technically, "ein berliner" is "a jellydonut"; however, in the context, it is clear he is not declaring himself to be a pastry. Likewise, if, instead of saying "Yo soy Cubano," I say "Yo soy un Cubano," I am not, in fact, calling myself a sandwich.
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btw, you only think the Cheesy Gordita Crunch is good because you're too young to remember the awesomeness of the beef burrito. But the good news is that you can, as has been mentioned, still order a beef burrito. Even though it hasn't been on the menu for about fifteen years, they will still make it for you if you ask for it.
And chocotacos are of no concern, since they have cinnamon twists.
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quote:Originally posted by Icarus: btw, you only think the Cheesy Gordita Crunch is good because you're too young to remember the awesomeness of the beef burrito. But the good news is that you can, as has been mentioned, still order a beef burrito. Even though it hasn't been on the menu for about fifteen years, they will still make it for you if you ask for it.
And chocotacos are of no concern, since they have cinnamon twists.
The burritos always have onions. I hate onions. And tomatoes.
posted
No, the beef burrito had no tomatoes. Just beef, cheese, and special sauce. I don't think it has onions. If it does, they're small enough to be imperceptible, but you can ask for them to be left off.
(Do you ever have hamburgers or cheeseburgers from McDonald's?)
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quote:Very true, taco bell is expensive for the portions they give you. I can spend the same amount at the local Tex/Mex joint and get way better food and is just as quick. When I lived in DC there was even a Tex/Mex place that had a drive through and the best Carne Asada (sp?) in the area! Ummmmm, darn there's no little hungry Graemlin licking his lips to show hunger, but now I want some Tex/Mex! [/QB]
Curious. Around here, Tex/Mex is considered an insult, a way to describe a restaurant that serves highly Americanized mexican style food that's usually overpriced. A good authentic Mexican restaurant would never be called "Tex/Mex".
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Huh. In my experience, McDonald's uses the same shards of onions in its hamburgers and cheeseburgers. I prefer them, because I find them much less overpowering than whole onions.
Anyway, though, you can just ask for it with no onions. Since they make everything on the spot, that's not big deal.
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Around here, Tex-Mex also means Americanized, but it would only be considered an insult by a "real" Mexican restaurant. I happen to like Tex-Mex food more, in general, than more authentic Mexican food.
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I've always been under the impression that TexMex and Mexican food were two different things. I would assume a Mexican restaurant would be insulted if you called them TexMex, but only because you would be incorrect, not because TexMex is some horrible abomination.
Hmm, fajitas are TexMex, right? A Mexican style dish that originated in Texas. Yet many a Mexican restaurant serve fajitas. I shall start protesting immediately.
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Nope, after. Some say the first fajitas were served up right here in Houston at the original Mama Ninfa's. But everything I've read and heard puts them in the Texas Rio Valley.
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quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk: So, in my opinion, "gordita" directly translates to "small fat female". Granted, it's referring to an arguably femenine product (be it an enchilada, chalupa, etc...), as is the nature in Spanish that every word is considered male or female (there are exceptions, yes; humor me). The only masculine Mexican food I can think of is a taco, and a "taco gordita" is simply wrong, whereas it should be a "taco gordito", but that's arguably irrelevant.
To Nighthawk and everyone else on this thread who has been translating "gordita" literally from the Spanish to the English all you have done is illustrate how completely uselessly and utterly inaccurate literal translations can be. What we need here is not someone who speaks native Spanish, but someone from Central Mexico where this term orginates.
In central Mexico, a "gordita" is a common bread. Its made from corn masa patted out to be ~ 1/2 cm thick and then cooked so that it puffs up forming a hollow pocket. Its a corn version of pita bread. It is usually cut open and stuffed with oil, salsa, cheese and possibly other stuff. The term "gordita" applies to either the bread itself or the stuffed version. With a lot of stretching, one can sort of see the relationship between the Taco Bell version and the Mexican "Gordita" but it takes quite a stretch.
What you've done in literally translating the term is akin to translating "Frankfurter" to mean "man from Frankfurt" in the phrase "I ate a Frankfurter". While the translation could be defended as literally correct, it is in fact just wrong. The word "Frankfurter", like the word "gordita" can have several meanings. It could mean any male gendered item from Frankfurt. It could mean a man from Frankfurt. But in this case the meaning isn't ambiguous, it refers specifically to a type of sausage that was first made by a Vienese butcher who was trained in Frankfurt.
The Taco Bell "Cheesy Gordita Crunch" isn't an ambigous reference to a little fat girl, it is a clear reference to a type of Mexican flat bread. To translate it as "little flat girl, is just plain wrong.
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um, I made it pretty clear in my post that context was everything. Without any context, if you say "gordita," the most likely interpretation is that you are talking about a fat girl.
It pisses me off more than a little when someone disses my Spanish.
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But Icarus, according to my good friend from central Mexico, if someone says "gordita" without any context in her home region, it most likely means corn flat bread and not "little fat girl".
I have no doubt that in your region when someone says "gordita" without a context they most likely mean "little fat girl". Its simply irrelevant. Taco Bell didn't name their "Cheesy Gordita Chrunch" based on the common usage in your region, they named it based on the common usage in my friends home region in Mexico.
My analogy continues to apply. If I were to use the word "Frankfurter" without any context in Vienna, most everyone would assume I was talking about sausage. But if I used the same term in central German where the sausage is more commonly called a "Wiener", most everyone would assume I was talking about a man from Frankfurt.
I apologize if it seemed that I was dissing on your Spanish, that wasn't my intend. My diatribe was against "literal translation" which is one of my pet peeves.
Unless you are translating poetry or jokes in which double meanings of words are important and intended, a "literal translation" which utterly fails to capture the intent of the author shouldn't be called "literally correct", it should be called "wrong".
Perhaps that diatribe was out of place here where people may have simply been interested in the multiple meanings of the word or perhaps even joking about eating "little fat girls" at Taco Bell. To the extent that it was, I apologize.
I don't however think it was irrelevant to point out that among at least one group of native Spanish speaker in one region of Mexico, the word's most common usage was for describing corn flat bread and not little fat girls.
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quote:Originally posted by Icarus: Around here, Tex-Mex also means Americanized, but it would only be considered an insult by a "real" Mexican restaurant. I happen to like Tex-Mex food more, in general, than more authentic Mexican food.
In most parts of the West, at least most parts where my husband and I have lived (read Montana, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico), Texans in general have a negative reputation and so association of anything with Texas can be considered an insult.
I've never heard of restaurant in this part of the country that advertised serving Tex-Mex food. I just searched in Yellowbook and found 4 pages of "Mexican Restaurants" in Salt Lake City but 0 Tex-Mex restaurants, so I'm not completely off the wall in my personal experience.
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posted
To me a "literal translation" is when you translate something fairly long word by word, and in particular, with no regard for idiom. Now I can see that in this case there may be two competing idioms at work here, but that doesn't mean that Nighthawk and I were translating it "literally," but that we were operating, perhaps, under a different set of idioms. I'm not sure that the literal versus contextual translation issue really is in play at all when the selection being translated is a single word.
I'm glad you didn't intend to dis my Spanish. The reason it came across to me as though you did was the strong wording like "useless," "utterly inaccurate," and "in fact just wrong." Outside of the context of Taco Bell, translating "gordita" as "fat girl" is not "in fact just wrong." It may not be the only possible interpretation, but since most Spanish speakers would likely translate it that way--even if those from Central Mexico would not--it is certainly a valid translation.
I don't think anyone was arguing that Taco Bell literally wanted their menu item to be called a "fat girl." I think Glenn was pointing out a funny aspect of the name, and Nighthawk and I were pointing out that yes, outside of a Taco Bell, it certainly could be (correctly) interpreted that way. It think we all recognized, though, that that wasn't actually what Taco Bell had in mind.
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I'm not saying you are off the wall. But around here we do have restaurants that describe themselves as Tex-Mex. In addition, I would describe any national chain I'm familiar with as Tex-Mex, whether they describe themselves that way or not.
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quote:Originally posted by Icarus: I'm not saying you are off the wall. But around here we do have restaurants that describe themselves as Tex-Mex. In addition, I would describe any national chain I'm familiar with as Tex-Mex, whether they describe themselves that way or not.
We have alot of very Americanized mexican restaurants around here too, and I know that in many parts of the country they would be called Tex-Mex. But here, Tex-Mex is a slur. No one from this region would call food they like, Tex-Mex. That regional context always makes it seem odd when I hear people from other regions praising "Tex-Mex". I know its just a regionalism, but its still hard for me to think of "Tex-Mex" as meaning anything but "bad".
[ November 30, 2006, 10:56 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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quote:Originally posted by Icarus: I'm glad you didn't intend to dis my Spanish. The reason it came across to me as though you did was the strong wording like "useless," "utterly inaccurate," and "in fact just wrong."
Once again I'm sorry Icarus, as I said before this is a pet peeve of mine which I hope explains the harsh language.
While I recognize that the entire discussion started in a joking tone, until I posted it, no one in this thread had noted that "gordita' also referred to a type of corn flat bread commonly eaten in central Mexico. If I had started a joking discussion of a menu featuring "Americaner", followed with long discussions of how "Americaner" would be most accurately translated as "man from America" but never mentioning that it was also a common name for a Cinnamon roll in many parts of Germany, I would find it justifiable for you to dis my German.
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