Level B1 · Chapter 59
Sancho and Teresa Argue
Sancho comes home penniless and announces he is going to be a governor. His wife answers in proverbs, which is her way of saying no.
What you will learn
- Recognise everyday spoken Spanish: anda ya, qué va, ni hablar.
- Understand a proverb and know what it is being used for.
- Argue with somebody close to you without sounding like a textbook.
Before you read
This lesson is a domestic argument, so the Spanish is spoken Spanish. Two things to collect as you read. First the small interjections that carry the tone: anda ya, qué va, ni hablar. Second the refranes, the proverbs Teresa fires off instead of arguing. A proverb has a fixed shape you cannot rearrange, and it is used to close a conversation rather than to open one.The story in easy Spanish
Sancho Panza volvió a su casa una tarde con la cara muy alegre.
Sancho Panza came home one afternoon with a very cheerful face.
Su mujer, Teresa, lo miró de arriba abajo y no vio dinero ninguno.
His wife, Teresa, looked him up and down and saw no money at all.
Tampoco vio ropa nueva, ni zapatos, ni nada que se pareciera a una ganancia.
She saw no new clothes either, no shoes, nothing that looked like earnings.
«Vengo contento, mujer», dijo él, «aunque venga sin blanca en el bolsillo».
"I am happy, wife," he said, "even if I come home without a coin in my pocket."
«Salgo otra vez con mi señor don Quijote, que ya está sano y con ganas».
"I am setting out again with my master Don Quixote, who is well now and eager."
«Y esta vez vuelvo con una ínsula debajo del brazo, para que tú la mandes».
"And this time I come back with an island under my arm, for you to govern."
«Anda ya», respondió Teresa sin levantar la vista de la olla.
"Oh, come off it," Teresa answered without lifting her eyes from the pot.
«Come tu pan y no te metas en salsas que no son tuyas».
"Eat your bread and do not meddle in sauces that are not yours."
«El que va a por lana muchas veces vuelve trasquilado, Sancho».
"He who goes out for wool often comes back shorn, Sancho."
Sancho le explicó que sería gobernador antes de que acabara el año.
Sancho explained that he would be a governor before the year was out.
Le dijo que su hija se casaría con un conde y viviría en la corte.
He told her their daughter would marry a count and live at court.
Le prometió que ella misma sería doña Teresa, con vestido de seda y criadas.
He promised her she herself would be Doña Teresa, with a silk dress and maids.
A Teresa la idea no le hizo ninguna gracia, y lo dijo enseguida.
Teresa did not find the idea funny at all, and she said so at once.
Contestó que en el pueblo se reirían de ella en cuanto la vieran.
She answered that the village would laugh at her the moment they saw her.
Dijo que las honras cansan mucho y que cada oveja debe ir con su pareja.
She said grand titles are tiring and that every sheep should keep to its own kind.
«Casa a la niña con quien sea de su condición», insistió muy seria.
"Marry the girl to whoever is of her own station," she insisted, very serious.
«Y déjate de condes, que más vale pájaro en mano que ciento volando».
"And forget about counts. A bird in the hand is worth a hundred in the air."
Sancho no discutió, porque conocía muy bien aquel tono de su mujer.
Sancho did not argue, because he knew that tone of his wife’s very well.
Cuando Teresa soltaba dos refranes seguidos, la conversación estaba terminada.
When Teresa came out with two proverbs in a row, the conversation was over.
Se guardó los suyos para el camino, donde nadie se los iba a discutir.
He saved his own for the road, where nobody was going to argue with them.
Aquella noche los dos cenaron en silencio, mirando cada uno su plato.
That night the two of them ate in silence, each looking at his own plate.
Teresa lloró un poco mientras recogía la mesa, aunque no quiso que él la viera.
Teresa cried a little as she cleared the table, though she did not want him to see.
Después le preparó la alforja con pan, queso y una camisa limpia.
Then she packed his saddlebag with bread, cheese and a clean shirt.
Le puso también unas monedas suyas, sin decirle de dónde habían salido.
She also put in some coins of her own, without telling him where they came from.
A la mañana siguiente, muy temprano, dejó que se fuera sin llorar más.
The next morning, very early, she let him go without crying any more.
Desde la puerta lo vio marcharse detrás de un caballo flaquísimo.
From the doorway she watched him walk off behind an extremely thin horse.
Vocabulary
Proverbs from this lesson
- cada oveja con su pareja
- like should marry like
- más vale pájaro en mano
- a bird in the hand
- ir a por lana y volver trasquilado
- to come back worse off
- no meterse en salsas
- to mind your own business
- las honras cansan
- rank is a burden
- a quien madruga, Dios le ayuda
- the early bird catches the worm
Talking bluntly
- anda ya
- come off it
- qué va
- not at all
- ni hablar
- no way
- venga
- come on
- déjate de
- forget about
- a mí qué
- what is it to me
- ya lo creo
- you bet
- menudo
- some, what a
Sancho’s house
- la olla
- the pot
- la alforja
- the saddlebag
- el queso
- the cheese
- la camisa
- the shirt
- la moneda
- the coin
- recoger la mesa
- to clear the table
- la ganancia
- the earnings
- la seda
- silk
Kitchen Spanish and proverbs
Anda ya, Sancho.
Déjate de condes.
Cada oveja con su pareja.
Teresa never once argues. She answers with fixed pieces of language, and that is a real strategy in Spanish, not a quirk of hers. This lesson is about two kinds of fixed piece.
1. The small words that carry the tone
Spoken Spanish leans hard on a handful of short interjections. They have no grammar to speak of and they do most of the emotional work of a conversation.
| Spanish | English | register |
|---|---|---|
| Anda ya. | Come off it. | friendly disbelief |
| Qué va. | Not at all. | mild denial |
| Ni hablar. | No way. | flat refusal |
| Venga, vámonos. | Come on, let us go. | urging |
| Déjate de condes. | Forget about counts. | closing a topic |
| Ya lo creo. | You bet. | strong agreement |
| Menudo gobernador. | Some governor he is. | ironic |
Two of these are worth a warning. Menudo literally means tiny, and in this use it means the opposite of tiny, so menudo problema is a huge problem. And venga is the same word as the subjunctive of venir, but as an interjection it has drifted away from any meaning of coming.
2. Refranes
A refrán is a proverb with a locked shape. You cannot reorder it, you cannot swap a synonym in, and you very often cannot put the articles back where a normal sentence would want them.
| proverb | literal | use |
|---|---|---|
| Cada oveja con su pareja. | Every sheep with its mate. | stick to your own kind |
| Más vale pájaro en mano que ciento volando. | One bird in hand beats a hundred flying. | do not gamble what is safe |
| Quien va a por lana vuelve trasquilado. | He who goes for wool comes back shorn. | you may lose more than you win |
| A quien madruga, Dios le ayuda. | God helps the early riser. | get started early |
Notice the grammar inside them. Quien and el que stand in for a whole person with no antecedent. The verb is in the plain present even though nothing is happening now, because a proverb claims to be true always. And the articles vanish: pájaro en mano, not un pájaro en la mano. That stripped quality is how you recognise one when it goes past.
3. What a proverb is for
This is the part that gets missed. A refrán is not offered as an argument that can be answered. It is a way of ending a discussion by appealing to something everybody already agrees with. Sancho understands this perfectly: after two proverbs in a row he stops talking. Using one in a real conversation is a strong move, and using two is close to slamming a door.
Teresa Panza, the only one doing the arithmetic
Teresa Panza is on stage for a handful of pages in the whole book, and she is the only character in it who does arithmetic. Everybody else, including the priest, the barber and the graduate, argues with Don Quixote about whether chivalry is real. Teresa argues about whether the plan pays. She points out that a title brings costs, that the village will mock a farm woman in silk, and that a daughter married upwards is a daughter you rarely see again. None of this is refuted anywhere in the novel, and by the end she turns out to have been right about all of it.
The chapter carries a very strange footnote from Cervantes himself. The translator of Cide Hamete breaks in to say he suspects this chapter is a forgery, because Sancho talks in it with more subtlety than a man of his condition could manage. It is a joke about the whole apparatus of Arabic manuscript and Moorish historian, and it is also a serious observation: Sancho does grow in Part Two, and Cervantes wants you to notice the growth rather than let it pass.
The proverbs are the other half of her portrait. Spanish proverb collections were a publishing phenomenon of the sixteenth century, and Cervantes plays the fashion for laughs by giving Sancho far too many of them, sometimes six in a sentence, often barely connected to the point. Teresa uses two, both accurate, both fatal. She is the better proverb-user in the marriage, and Sancho knows it.
Cervantes in the original
después que os hicistes miembro de caballero andante habláis de tan rodeada manera, que no hay quien os entienda
ever since you became a limb of a knight errant you talk in such a roundabout way that nobody can understand you
Teresa to Sancho, in II, 5. Hicistes is the old form of hiciste, and miembro de caballero andante is her own coinage, a limb belonging to a knight errant, which is funnier and more exact than anything a careful writer would produce. The complaint is that since he took up with Don Quixote he speaks in a rodeada manera, a roundabout way, and nobody can follow him. It lands twice. Inside the scene it is a wife telling her husband he has started putting on airs. Outside it, it is Cervantes flagging something he knows the reader has noticed, that Sancho in Part Two is more articulate than Sancho in Part One. He makes the point again a few lines further on, when the translator of the Arabic manuscript interrupts to say he thinks the entire chapter is a forgery for exactly that reason. So the author raises the objection, gives it to a character, gives it again to his own fictional translator, and then goes on writing Sancho as he pleases.