#3 Today's Spanish

Your waiting is finally over, the first volume of "Today's ... " is here.

This series introduces interesting expressions that I find while I'm learning languages or just luckily encounter. This first article of the series tells you two Spanish phrases.

①　"meter las narices" = "to mind other's business / to bother"

Sounds like you can use it very often. Let's say, you go buying green onion with romesco sause at your favorite grocery store, and a lady says "Huh, the carcotada festival made you buy them, right", and you will feel like to say this.

Just in case you didn't get what's funny about this expression, I'll tell you. In Japanese we have similar expression which literally translated to "poke one's neck". Here "meter" means "to insert", yeah, it's okay. But then "las narices"? "The noses"? Sure, in English, you say "put nose into". Looks like we got another useful expression here. Wait, how many noses do I have, by the way?

②　"cortar el cuello"  = "to fire"

It's quite fine for me to say this, but I don't appreciate if someone says this to me. Let's say, you as an international student come to an international office at university, and a staff says like "Sorry, I speak only Spanish", and you'll be like "C'mon, someone please".

Just in case you didn't get what's funny about this expression, I'll tell you. In Japanese we say "cut one's neck" meaning to fire. "cortar" means "to cut", so this sounds no problem. "el cuello" is just "the neck". Wowowow, you insert your noses and they just cut from your neck!

↓Japanese version of this article