Puerto Rico Research Paper

I have many example about that myself. I am Puerto Rican and I moved to the United States some years ago. When I moved here, I started to know people from other countries like Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador. In Puerto Rico we speak Spanish and I knew that in Mexico and Central America the speak Spanish as well, but I did not know that their Spanish was different from ours. I assumed that everybody that speaks Spanish use the exact same words, but moving to the United States helped me learn that is not true. When I started to make new friends, they could not understand some things that I used to say and I had to explain what those words meant to me. Some other times they got offended because of something that I said and I did not know why. They also used some word …show more content…
I did not understand what was going on, until one of my friends explained what the word cojelo means to them. The word cojelo come from the word “cojer”. In Puerto Rico we use that word all the time, cojer means to take or hold. An example of that would be if somebody ask me for something, I would answer something like; “Ahi esta. Cojelo” (There it is. Take it.) Or if you ask somebody to hold something for you, it would be something like; “¿Puedes cojer esto por mi?”(Can you hold this for me?) For them that word is something completely different, for them cojer is a vulgar word for saying sex. When I told him “Cojelo suave”, I was telling him to take it easy, but he thought I was asking him for sex!! I was in shock when I learned that, and I explained to everybody in the room what cojer means to me, but since I know what it means to them, I do not use it any more when I am around people that is not Puerto Rican. I definitely learned my lesson. One other time something similar happened, but this time it was one of them that said a word that for me it is vulgar. One of the guys mention the word “bicho” and I was in