My Burning Tongue: Mexican Spanish

by Lee Jamison

MORE than 167 million natives speak Mexican Spanish—with nearly 40 million speakers in the United States alone. Explore the idiosyncrasies of this colorful language spoken throughout the region. If a Mexican asks you for a popote, should you be worried? If he shouts ¡Aguas!, will you get wet? If another asks ¿Cómo ves?, is he concerned about your visual acuity? Find out what Mexicans are really saying as you uncover the hidden meaning behind more than 500 local words, idioms, and sayings. Some 100 illustrations make it easy to grasp the concept behind the words. We don't teach you Spanish; we teach you how to make your Spanish more Mexican!

Genres: Spanish Literature

230 pages, Paperback

Published August 12, 2021

About the author

Lee Jamison has been a volunteer teacher among the Hispanic community for some forty years. He was first exposed to Spanish in his first year of high school in Ohio, USA in the mid-80s. The following year exchange students from Honduras and Spain arrived, prompting him to go beyond the books and dive into conversational Spanish. In 1988 he moved to New York City and joined a vibrant Caribbean community in Manhattan, chatting regularly with Puerto Ricans, Cubans and Dominicans who mercilessly machine-gunned sawed-off words and phrases--together with a smattering of Spanglish. Then, in the mid-1990s, Lee and his wife moved to Nicaragua, where they were exposed to yet another variety of Spanish. Living in Central America, they had ample opportunities to visit Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Panama. The experience taught him that when you move to a different country, you not only have to change the chip in your telephone, but the one in your mind as well, since each Spanish-speaking country has its own words, phrases and sayings that only locals understand. In 2012, the couple was unexpectedly on the move again, this time to Mexico City, where yet another distinctive Spanish awaited them. Lee and his wife Moraima currently reside in Guadalajara, Mexico where they continue to learn country-specific Spanish one conversation at a time.