Taking the bus driver
Being Argentinian and a teacher and writer of Spanish, I never cease to be amazed at how all Hispanics can communicate without much problem. Well ... except when my cousin's Spanish wife told us, at a wedding in Argentina, that Buenos Aires was wonderful because of the buses: Cogimos un colectivero y fuimos a muchos sitios, y luego cogimos otro colectivero .... My cousin's red face and our laughter made up for her embarrassment at finding out they had sex with more than one bus driver in the capital! Comment: While the Spanish use the verb coger very frequently to mean 'to take', Spanish Americans attach a sexual connotation to it, and prefer to use tomar instead. In addition, my cousin's wife got confused between the Argentinian word for 'buses', colectivos, and their drivers, colectiveros. So, if no sex was implied, in Spain Cogimos un autobús should sound a bit like this in Argentina: Tomamos un colectivo.
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A friend from Latin America came to Spain a few years ago, and he wasn't used to our use of the word 'coger', which is pretty normal in here. So he was laughing all the time!
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