Una Palabra Sola Episode 21, la carcajada
Join me in the one of the greatest (free!) stress-relievers there are…. bring the context and las carcajadas; Carlin cosplayers optional but always invited.
Song recommendation: Interludio Risoterapia por Kase.O.
carcajada: (n) laughter, cackle, guffaw
(Risa impetuosa y ruidosa)
Synonyms: reír (to laugh), reírse de (laugh at, make fun of), la risa (laughter), la burla (taunt, jibe, mockery, joke)
Antonyms: sollozar (to sob), gritar (to shout, cry, scream, wail), el llanto (a wail), grave, serio (serious, grave), sobrio (sober, serious), llorar (to cry)
Etymology uncertain, possibly onomatopoeic.
For reflection:
Who are you spending time with? How does that impact you?
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What are your favorite ways to laugh - and keep on laughing?
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When was the last time you laughed? Is laughing every day a meaningful goal?
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Una PS has been a labor of love from the beginning. If you’d like to join our lil’ love fest via the Deseo program, click here to sign up! We all have our own wishes and desires when it comes to language, and with some resources and accountability, I can help make yours come true.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Hola y bienvenidos, hello and welcome to Una Palabra Sola, where we get to learn Spanish one word at a time. I am your host, Megan Miller, founder and teacher at Aprovechar Language Solutions. Empezamos and let's dive in! Hola, hola otra vez and welcome back to the latest episode of Una Palabra Sola, a place where we get to learn Spanish una palabra a la vez, or one word at a time.
And if you're listening to this one when it drops, which if I get my shit together, will be in May of 2024. Spring has sprung; things are just kind of moving and shifting. Quite honestly, things have been uptight and just working within the education realm. I feel like a lot of teachers start to lose their shit around May. The stress is building there. The countdowns have begun for summer, and it's a lot of stress, and they're just kind of all walking around just like little, little rubber band balls. Myself kind of included in that, so, as I was thinking about how to handle this kind of stress and shift and change and all of that, there, I think there's no better way to handle that stress than to laugh.
1:47
Personally, I love stand-up comedy. I knew I met the one when he said that I was similar to a female George Carlin. I love George Carlin, so take that as you will. I don't think that I'm that funny, but here you guys are listening to me, so it doesn't really matter what I think. And quite honestly, part of my personality is just kind of made of stand-up bits. The last one that we watched was Kyle Kinane and we just had to keep pausing. It took us an hour and a half to get through an hour stand up special because I kept crying from laughing. I just needed all of the Kleenex because there were just so much waterworks going on with laughing. And, you know, laughter is, it's a great little stress reliever, it's a great distraction, and it's also a great unifier, which is why it's always fun to go to things like this in groups.
2:46
So, this word kind of keeps coming up as well in one of my Spanish books, El Tiempo Entre Costuras, por Maria Dueñas. Definitely would recommend. It's a big one. What I've been doing is I have the English version that was gifted to me, and I have the Spanish version. And so I'll read a chapter in Spanish, and then I'll reread it in English and make sure that I have the translation right because I'm too poor for a teacher right now. So, if you like me need that little stopgap of some extra practice, that is a really interesting theme, Maria Dueñas spins such a tale. It is so rich, but this word keeps coming up and yeah. I'm going to stop stalling and just tell you our word is carcajada. First of all, it's fun to say. I haven't said it that much out loud, but it's just fun. Carcajada.
It is a noun, which means that it is la carcajada. And what this means, it's like a loud kind of cackle or like a guffaw where you have in El Diccionario de María Moliner, she calls it a risa impetuosa y ruidosa, a loud impulsive laugh. And it's used very nuancedly. Tiene un matiz. It has this nuance where it's used literally like, reírse a carcajadas, which means to laugh loudly. But it can also mean like a little bit of flirting, like the interaction that you have between humans. I don't think that an AI, at least at this point in time, would have una carcajada. But this is taken from my book.
4:47
And she, the, la protagonista, the protagonist, the main character, personaje, is kind of flirting with someone and he's like,
“Oh, ¿quiere saber la verdad?” (Like, do you want to know the truth?) Preguntó con un guiño de fingida complicidad. (So it's like with a wink of just, pretended complicity. And she was like), “Sí, por favor.” dije, yo dije, bajando el tono y siguiéndole el juego. (So she's just following the game. And he's like, well,) “Pues, la verdad es que no lo sé, aclaró con una carcajada.” (So he's like, oh, well, the truth is I don't know.)
And that's, a carcajada. So it is that kind of español culto. Como sinónimos, the closest that we have is la risa, which is laughter. Reír, which is to laugh. Reírse de, which is to laugh at or make fun of. You can also have burlarse, una burla, which is kind of like a joke or a mockery a taunt, if you will, and la risotada, which is like a cackle, a burst of laughter, risotada.
6:10
So this kind of nuanced understanding of the language; yes, we can have risa, which is laughter. Carcajada, quite honestly, sounds so much better. And this is that we have our base level of understanding of Spanish. This is essentially when you learn all the primary colors and you can count to 10 and you know basic feelings. This is like two or three steps above that. Risa might mean laughter, but carcajada just sounds better because it provides that additional context. And in language, context is king because it not only tells you about the action, there's laughter, but it tells you about the environment in which that action takes place. It's impulsive, it's laughter, it’s this loud laughter. People are not trying to ha ha ha behind closed doors or behind their hands. They aren't trying to hide it. It's very much like you're going to a comedy show. You're going to a casino. You're going to some sort of place where you can see and be seen, and this carcajada, this isn't planning to laugh, but this is just when you're flirting and you're having fun and you're interacting with other people.
The interesting part, especially with the book and the piece that I just read is that this takes place during wartime. And Maria Dueñas does a lovely, I wish that there was a better word than lovely. There probably is, but I can't think of it. Lovely point and painting this kind of grey, dismal wartime with this encampment of people that are profiting from it.
8:03
In Star Wars, in one of the Star Wars, you know, the, the dark forces and, and the resistance and all of that. You have good versus evil that's fighting, but then they go to that planet and it's like a whole casino where people are selling weapons to both sides. And this is something very similar that's happening in El Tiempo Entre Costuras.
With carcajada, it's not a noun that you would use at a funeral, hopefully unless it was like a real big celebration of life. It's not something that you would really find in a jail. Carcajada is something that you would find at a party at a place that has that environment that is conducive to fun and having fun. Similar to la burla, or burlarse, or la risa, reír, la risotada.
Como antónimos. This is where you can think of more of like the wartime, but you can have like grave, serio, sobrio. Where you can have something that's serious, it's grave, it's sober. Una persona sobrio is a restrained person. And also the opposite of laughter is crying, right? So you can have llorar, or llorar is your basic verb to cry, but we're going to go back to that español culto and say sollozar, to sob; gritar, that means to shout, to cry, to scream; to wail, el llanto, you're wailing, el llanto. And that goes, llorar might be your base cry, but then sometimes you need that extra oomph and similar to la risa and carcajada, you have llorar and el llanto.
10:13
Como acción, carcajearse is the verb to have a carcajada or reírse a carcajadas. But then el carcajeo is la acción. So that's the action of laughing with a cackle, essentially, to cackle. So carcajada, this, this is really, first of all, it's just fun to say. I hope that you have said it and repeated it, carcajada, la carcajada. The etymology, I almost skipped over this because there is really no certain origin of una carcajada. Everything that I have looked for and looked at says that it is onomatopoeic in origin, and onomatopoeic is another fun English word, and onomatopoeias, other than being your fifth-grade spelling bee championship word, hopefully, are all of those noise words.
An onomatopoeia is, por ejemplo, pum, pam, tic, toc, miau, rau. Whatever those sound words are, those are onomatopoeias. So, these are your SAT, una carcajada is kind of like an SAT-level Spanish word here. And the hard part, Quite honestly, como adulta, as an adult, is that there's no like SAT-level questions, other than like having specific guided courses for español culto. At least none that I've seen. It would be very nice if there was like a test prep for Spanish that you could just purchase without being in school, and it didn't cost a whole liver on the black market.
12:08
But going back to this carcajada and how it tells you more about the environment than just the action that happened. Going back to this idea of context, una carcajada gives you more context to that laughter, than simplemente una risa. It reminds me of an English class that I was recently teaching, and I was teaching the five W's. Who, what, when, where, why, and how. I was not kidding. I told the class multiple times. I was like, this is la clave. This is the key for understanding literally anything in the universe. Is who, quién; what, qué; when, cuándo; where, dónde; why, por qué; how, cómo. That context is king in language and so much of language, when we teach it, it really depends on the context. It depends on the environment. It depends on who you're conversing with. Like, I wish it were so simple, as simple as saying like, oh, like, tell me how I can explain, I don't know, Social Security to someone outside of the United States. First of all, I don't think I can explain Social Security to someone within the United States. Outside of that, that's a whole other thing. I'm like, okay, what's fact? What's bias? Who, what, when, where, why, how? And when you find these answers, you can find the context and present your findings, essentially.
13:55
When we start learning a language, it goes from this transactional relationship. Dime cómo, cuándo, dame. Like, tell me, give me, this is what I have, and this is what I'm going to give you. This is what I need, this is what I'm going to give. Give and take. Transaction. It goes from this transaction to a relationship. To what I like to call is like a fireside chat. Like, tell me more. What do you think? How do you think? How do you relate with the world? How do you perceive this thing? How do I perceive this thing? It goes from this, kind of fluorescent light moment, either in a classroom or at a supermarket or something, this transaction to more of your fire light or your candlelight.
Because when we turn off all of our electric lights and we just have our natural light of sun, fire, etc, people relate differently. They're more deep. We relate, I think, on a deeper level with each other than when we do just out and about in the world, just bumbling around from one point to another, similar to the large-ass carpenter bees that are around here. They just kind of bounce off and ping pong off of my window because they don't understand what glass is.
So this carcajada, this SAT word of Spanish, this impulsive laughter that's based on the interaction that has so many hints about the environment in which it is performed, it also kind of reminds me of going back to this idea that you'll grow as much as your environment. Meaning, when we're surrounded by interesting, multifaceted, deep people, by default, we also become more interesting, multifaceted, and deep. And it's scary to go outside of your comfort zone, and it becomes, this might just be from my unique perspective, but it seems to be more difficult to find where my comfort zone ends with a lot of people because we're around so many like-minded people so much, but it is that importance of stepping outside your comfort zone on a regular basis and meeting new people and also having the goal of those new people to raise you up not necessarily bring you down.
16:40
I come from a very small, depressed, economically, mentally, emotionally town, and it was very easy to, to smoke. I was a smoker for seven years. It was easy to smoke while working in food service, because everyone else did. Because the environment, not only in having smoke breaks, but that environment in being Midwest Depression, which is very unique in its feeling, it was a lot easier to smoke. Now I meditate. That's how I take my deep breaths. But before, I used to take deep breaths with chemicals. And quite honestly, when I left food service, it was a hell of a lot easier to quit smoking. Because I wasn't in that environment. There's this beauty in changing our environment, in changing our surroundings, not only our physical surroundings, but also the people we surround ourselves with, not necessarily just for a weekend vacation, but for a while, for a few weeks, for a month. I've been kind of yearning for an extended stay elsewhere to just kind of move environments, both in the physical sense and in a social sense, to just be able to kind of reconnect with myself, with life.
And Americans are one of the few where it's not socially acceptable to take the time and to take the time to really experience, to really immerse yourself in that new place. There's the social stress about making it a certain way, making the most of, ignoring the feelings, of rushing, and just sit in the discomfort of just being. It's not something that us Americans generally do. We try to busy away our discomfort of just being a lot of times. Or if we are just being, there's this constant stress or undulation of doing. It's not enough to just be, we also have to do.
19:03
And going back to this word of carcajada, because yes, it is the company that you keep. Not only to be able to reírse a carcajadas, but also to even learn about this word to begin with. But it is onomonopeic. Meaning you have to partake in it in order to say it. So, it's one of those words, it's not like cheese. Like, if I think about cheese before taking a photo, it's never made sense. But, I love the words, especially in Spanish, that you have to smile when you say them. Like, la risa or sonrisa. You have to smile when you say smile with sonrisa. And with carcajada, you, you do have to partake in it. It's finding your own ritmo. It's four syllables, carcajada, and you can just play with it. It's one of those playful culta words. And the last thing about la carcajada is that it is impulsive.
It's a personal goal to make sure that I laugh at least once a day. And it is a goal that I would definitely recommend other people having because life can be serious. There can be grief, there can be mourning, there can be events, but if you aren’t laughing and you aren't enjoying, you aren't disfrutando life, what are you trying to do with it? There's only so much time that we can go through in this plodding, head down, doing world. And I think about those folks that just live for the weekend and they hate the week. Well, they're hating the majority of their time on this earth. We spend an inordinate amount of time working and making a living.
21:12
It's good to laugh once in a while, as you're doing that and outside of that. And having that impulsive carcajada, that impulsive chuckle or guffaw, or just cackle, it just brings us back to quite honestly, what I think is the chispa, the spark in our soul of having something that is enjoyable and is meant to be enjoyed. And honestamente, quite honestly, it's always easier to laugh in a group. No one wants to be that person that's just watching stand-up on the train and laughing. But I also have been that person, and it is still very enjoyable, but it is always easier to laugh in a group. So if you are interested in finding your little tribu or finding your group, be sure to check out my monthly program, Deseo, at deseospanishprogram.info to find your Tribu de Carcajadas. También, check out show notes, transcript, or request a word at Aprovechar.me. Until next time, un abrazo fuerte.
Gracias otra vez, and thank you so much for coming along with me on this ride to Una Palabra Sola. Be sure to check out the show notes for additional worksheets and materials. If you have a word that you would like me to review, please feel free to let me know at aprovecharlanguagesolutions.com. Hasta la próxima vez, until next time.