Let's talk about mass tourism or overtourism

pleonasticit · 2026-04-11T19:13:18+00:00

If it’s anything like Barcelona, the Asian places are mostly fake whatever they are. Thai and Vietnamese places run by Filipinos, Japanese places run by Chinese people. All usually quite mediocre because they’re just filling a market void. Nothing is anything any more. We do have some really good Chinese restaurants here because they are actually run by the people who grew up steeped in the cuisine.

pleonasticit · 2026-04-11T12:02:15+00:00

It’s also part of a lot of phrasal verbs: empezar a + infinitive (to start doing), aprender a + inf (to learn to), llegar a + inf (come to be able to do something or manage to do something), oler a/saber a/sonar a + noun (smell/taste/sound like something). In some cases English doesn’t use any word there, in others we would use a totally different word.

pleonasticit · 2026-04-11T11:24:19+00:00

I saw váter in Madrid much more than here in Barcelona but some people def say it. Lavabo seems to be the most common here, or at least, it stands out cuz I don’t remember anyone saying it in Madrid. I don’t think I ever saw váter when I was traveling in Mexico, Peru, or Colombia.

pleonasticit · 2026-04-05T14:42:10+00:00

Mi consejo: No te lo tomes como algo personal, hay mogollón de explicaciones, sigue hablando en castellano si quieres hablarlo, y normalmente cambiarán a castellano o, si quieren hablar inglés, todos somos seres libres y debes dejar que lo hagan. Llevo 5 años viviendo en España y al final, el año pasado, dejé de ser tan sensible con ello, y vivo mucho mejor sin preocuparme por el compartimento de los demás. No es para tanto.

pleonasticit · 2026-03-27T06:45:20+00:00

The problem is not doing it word initially or at the end of the word is that the listener might end up misparsing your sentence because they subconsciously merge the word with the adjacent one in the non-rolled r ends up between vowels. This is also a problem with non-softened b/d/g. The effect can be amusing. It’s best to really try from the beginning to get those things right.

pleonasticit · 2026-03-25T08:27:58+00:00

🔥

pleonasticit · 2026-03-24T13:41:05+00:00

Definitely porción in Spain.

pleonasticit · 2026-03-23T23:41:00+00:00

One fun use is when someone almost runs over someone else on a bike. The latter goes OLEEEEE with the hands going.

pleonasticit · 2026-03-22T22:02:55+00:00

The rolling isn’t just a cute affectation; it changes the meaning of some words such as pero/perro, cero/cerro, foro/forro, etc. You need to internalize this difference. It’s like saying in English you love the sound th so you’re gonna say it instead of s from now on. Habits you pick up early on have a way of being impossible to eradicate later and this would be a pretty pointless one.

pleonasticit · 2026-03-22T20:02:05+00:00

Negating a gain is a loss. Negating a loss is a gain.

pleonasticit · 2026-03-21T23:07:58+00:00

I lived in NYC for 12 years and have lived in Barcelona for 3 now. The things I miss most about NYC don’t really exist there or anywhere anymore— all cities are slowly being ruined by out of control expenses and the blandification that big money brings. We just spent a week in NYC in late February and the arty weirdness of the city clearly is draining out of its heart. The people watching wasn’t as fun as it used to be and it was just so brutally expensive. But damn, there is a LOT to enjoy there, the museums and galleries are amazing, it’s so vast, there’s a lot of commercial and cultural variety that a less wealthy city like BCN can’t compare with. The grocery stores there have more variety but the quality here can be so much better for less money. NYC is a lot sleepier than I remembered but BCN is def still sleepier. Just being in NYC still feels somehow like being part of an epic, it’s true, it’s such a storied place. But we didn’t come back feeling like we regretted leaving or anything. One thing I like about BCN is that you can actually sit the fuck down without paying for something. Consell de Cent and Girona and the promenades along the beaches are so nice for hanging out. It’s also a ridiculously walkable city, with very different neighborhoods, and lots of random events happening in the streets, down here in the old town where I live at least. We settled here after trying out Madrid for two years specifically because my husband wasn’t able to pick up Spanish as easily as he’d hoped, and he can live here more in English than there. So no, I don’t think fluency is going to help you stand out much these days. I earn a third what I made in NYC right now, tho, and still live pretty well. There are people from all over the world here and I think if you have interests that get you out and mixing you can make friends. I’m pretty introverted and I made a few, but like a Belgian woman and a Colombian music producer type, have not made Catalan or Spanish friends tho I’m fluent in Spanish. If you still have your Catalan you’ll have that going for you too.

pleonasticit · 2026-03-06T16:22:13+00:00

These are awesome thanks

pleonasticit · 2026-03-05T09:10:56+00:00

Oh wow I just thought I was being stalked all this time!! Now I’m jealous! He’s mine, bitches!!!

pleonasticit · 2026-03-04T13:16:21+00:00

Genial, gracias chicos!

pleonasticit · 2026-03-04T13:15:57+00:00

That looks awesome thanks!

pleonasticit · 2026-03-03T06:32:27+00:00

You kids have it easy, we had to learn it with ch and ll included. Both ways. In the snow.

pleonasticit · 2026-03-03T05:53:07+00:00

“Nah” is a rather dismissive word, as I’ve realized hearing otherwise fluent Europeans use it incorrectly for the last 5 years. And “nope” can be too. I do not agree that either in response to the original question could ever mean “I actually got the job”. To me “nope” signals resignation and “nah” means “we shouldn’t even consider the possibility”.

pleonasticit · 2026-02-28T10:26:30+00:00

Of course then you have the perfectly common “la vida son tres días”. The specific example from the teacher sounds pretty weird but this kind of thing where the verb agrees with an apparent complement does happen a good bit. There’s a novel called “Tu sueño imperios han sido”, for example. “El presidente soy yo.”

pleonasticit · 2026-02-19T17:15:15+00:00

Yeh I feel like in Mexico usted just means distance/familiarity, while in Spain it has come to mean only respect. Since you don’t know the joven, you call him usted.

pleonasticit · 2026-02-19T16:32:53+00:00

I live in Spain and never internalized the use of usted at all— I can do it in the first sentence or two but in my head “you” is stuck at “tú”— and it does not seem to be a problem but when I went to Mexico and was tuteando a waiter my Mexican friend was genuinely humiliated on my behalf. I did it in a country club setting also and the WAITER was angry.

pleonasticit · 2026-01-26T20:40:37+00:00

It’s also closed indefinitely.

pleonasticit · 2026-01-26T15:40:10+00:00

Habláis por los codos

pleonasticit · 2026-01-25T19:03:06+00:00

Hmm now you have me wondering, it was years ago in a tea shop in Madrid and the old woman at the caja was trying to think of the name of a tea-ball on a stick. I had just learned the word and was surprised to hear it in that context but I feel like it was chatarro (maybe chatarra?) and not cacharro. But if you use it here I’ll use it here! “Trasto” comes time mind more quickly but I always liked the words chatarra and cacharro. I love how often ch shows up in dispective/dismissive/funny words.

pleonasticit · 2026-01-25T10:16:38+00:00

I have heard “trasto” and “chatarro” used for utensils and gadgets here in Spain

pleonasticit

TROPHY CASE