From Cuentos Populares en Chile (Chilean Folktales) – by Ramón A. Laval
Part 1 – Magnificent Stories, Stories of Animals, Anecdotes (Cuentos maravillosos, Cuentos de animales, Anécdotas)
032. The Coquito Nuts Seller (El Vendedor De Coquitos)
[Nguyen: to appreciate this very short story, I’d need to retain the original Spanish-French conversations, as the Spanish-speaking seller and the French-speaking potential buyer are being confused by each other’s speech. I’ll provide English translations next to the conversation.]
Instead of hawking his merchandise, a coquito seller had the habit of repeatedly shaking the basket containing his items-for-sale up and down to make it sound aloud.
A Frenchman who did not speak Spanish nor know about the coquitos approached him and asked:
Comment s’apelle—ça? (French to English: what’s the name of this?)
Si no se pelan, ñor, se parten. (Spanish to English: you don’t peel them sir, you break the shell off. Note that the seller thought the buyer asked about peeling due to the similarity in sound of the spoken words.)
Comment? (French to English: What did you say?)
¡Con la mano! No, iñor, con pieira. (Spanish to English: With the hand! No, sir, with the rock. Note that “Comment” in French sounds like “Comer” in Spanish, which is “to eat”.)
Je ne comprend pas. (French to English: I don’t understand.)
Y si no habís de comprar ¿pa qué preguntay, gringo tal por cual? (Spanish to English: And if you are not going to buy, why did you ask, gringo? Note that “Comprend” in French sounds like “Comprar” in Spanish, which means to eat. Here, “gringo” means a foreigner.)
—– VOCABULARY —–
Coquito – (beverage) (Puerto Rico) coquito; nutsedge
Gabacho – (pejorative) (from France) French, froggy (pejorative); (from the Pyrenees) Pyrenean; (pejorative) (from the United States) (Mexico) American
Pelar – (to remove the outer covering of) to peel, to shell; (to flay) to skin; (to remove feathers from) to pluck; (to rob) to clean out, to fleece; (to crop) to cut someone’s hair short, to shave someone’s head; (to take notice of) to pay attention to; (to gossip) (Chile) to gossip; (to not matter) to suck it