"All Spaniards, we discovered, knew two English expressions. One was ‘OK, baby,’ the other was a word used by the Barcelona whores in their dealings with English sailors, and I am afraid the compositors would not print it."

Submitted by SlitchBap t3_yc28u1 in books

This is a quote from Chapter 4 of George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" and after my curiosity led to a quick internet search I cannot find what the censored phrase is. Does anyone know or have better internet sleuthing skills than I, who might be able to find it?

Also, this book is fantastic so far. If you dont know anything about the Spanish Civil War and like History/War than I can't recommend highly enough reading up on this conflict that has been so far overshadowed by the two world wars and completely removed from my american education.

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KrasnyRed5 t1_itjxgil wrote

My best guess would be fuck? As a question but I could be wrong obviously.

77

cavalier24601 t1_itjyj8w wrote

I suspect this is an example of a noodle incident, wherein something referenced vaguely is more intriguing than stating it plainly.

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WormsRoxanne t1_itjz63f wrote

That book is great. Got me into Orwell generally as more than the two books you have to read in high school. Down And Out in Paris And London is like Restaurant Confidential 80 years earlier.

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Lovat69 t1_itk1g5i wrote

Five dollar suckee suckee. Ten dollar anything you want.

−16

apeiron131 t1_itkdli3 wrote

chumino? (show me now) meaning c+unt

−8

hemingwaysfavgun t1_itkm9r6 wrote

dude that is my favorite fkn book I must have read it dozens of times. I went to barcelona and took a day long spanish civil war tour and unsurprisingly, the guide was like "so, who's read homage to catalonia?" and most people raised their hands very quickly.

As I hurried up the steps the Assault Guard on duty at the door barred the way with his long bayonet and demanded ‘papers’. I waved my discharge ticket at him; evidently he could not read, and he let me pass, impressed by the vague mystery of ’papers’

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Cyneganders t1_itkpifr wrote

That book is so good, I even published on it. Sadly so long ago, I don't remember what I did with the paper :(

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Bucklehairy t1_itkrjqt wrote

They said, "hey, baby, wanna fuck?"

You're not supposed to look that up, you're just supposed to be sufficiently seasoned to know that whores say the same thing to sailors in every language.

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kn1144 t1_itl1u4g wrote

Replying to scuac (#198,382)

I felt the same way about Jack Sparrow’s “obviously you have never been to Singapore” line in the first movie. Just such a great WTF moment that they had to ruin by explaining it.

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Potential_Energy_353 t1_itl3brd wrote

I think of the volunteers who went to Ukraine to fight as being pretty much the same as the volunteers who went to Spain…

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Cyneganders t1_itl3etn wrote

Replying to stop_a (#200,758)

I live in a different country now! Also, it wasn't for the university magazine, just one mostly populated by student and professors.

It was for the Norwegian magazine Bøygen (name from Ibsen's Peer Gynt) and I knew the editor of the issue. I don't even remember what I wrote, just that I totally loved the novel :)

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throwawayinthe818 t1_itl3kdw wrote

Replying to WormsRoxanne (#198,105)

Love that book. “It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty. You have thought so much about poverty—it is the thing you have feared all your life, the thing you knew would happen to you sooner or later; and it, is all so utterly and prosaically different. You thought it would be quite simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring.”

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Cyneganders t1_itl3u5m wrote

Replying to stop_a (#200,758)

Aha, I found it, in my inbox. (I recalled the name of the editor)

"Orwell’s flirt with reality" - I have to read it later to see what I was ranting about at the time. I got good feedback, so perhaps it wasn't a waste of ink!

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MissionarysDownfall t1_itl3zfs wrote

My favorite book of all time and one of the better histories from the perspective of the anarchist front in English imho.

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coffeeboard t1_itl8xlu wrote

Ok I am dying laughing now. I misread this, I thought the second expression the whores used was "I am afraid the compositors would not print it".

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Gedunk t1_itla1d1 wrote

On a related note, I'm currently reading a Farewell to Arms and one of the Italian soldiers (Rinaldi) always calls the narrator baby. I thought it was an attempt to make him seem feminine/possibly gay but this post has me second guessing that. Was it actually just a common phrase the Spanish/Italians knew?

7

Four_beastlings t1_itle1ol wrote

Replying to Gedunk (#201,570)

Maybe because it's different enough from Spanish to be memorable? In Spain Spanish you would never call someone "baby" unless you're talking about an actual baby (or a pet). Calling your romantic/sexual partner that has some gross connotations.

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Easy-Concentrate2636 t1_itlfz5c wrote

I’ve been meaning to read this for over a decade. Time to hunt it down in my apartment.

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MrHanoixan t1_itlltfb wrote

I'm going to make a completely uneducated guess that it was "fanny". The American definition means butt, but the OG Brit meaning was female genitals, and it probably would have been censored when this book was written.

The word "blowjob" came later, so to speak.

3

LordsMail t1_itltc4p wrote

Replying to coffeeboard (#201,455)

It's some deep slang with very interesting roots, and only appears in a small region of Spain to the point it's effectively a shibboleth, but to this day Catalonian prostitutes can be heard saying "I am afraid the compositors would not print it."

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chrispd01 t1_itlteju wrote

I believe this work has the truly great line “once again I was saved by the level of Spanish marksmanship …”

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lil_b_b t1_itm2eme wrote

Crosspost to r/askhistorians!

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JCPRuckus t1_itm3wtu wrote

Replying to DrSmirnoffe (#204,390)

It's more like, "Hint, don't show".

It's basically the same idea as, "The monster stops being scary once you get a clear look at it". Sometimes the best thing you can do is just give enough to spark the audience's imagination, and let them entertain themselves.

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El-Emperador t1_itm595o wrote

I'm sure it's not the same expression, but I think this is an appropriate thread to discuss some funny trivia.

One of the more common slang terms for a vagina in spanish, and more specifically in the South-western region (West Andalusia, and namely in the Cadiz Bay area) is "chumino". Which is a phonetical loan from the words used by English sailors in the port area: "Show me now".

Now you can't unlearn this.

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bamako45 t1_itm6jud wrote

"OK" seems to be pretty universal, or nearly, anyway.

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DrSmirnoffe t1_itm7z3p wrote

Replying to JCPRuckus (#204,624)

> It's basically the same idea as, "The monster stops being scary once you get a clear look at it".

This is pretty common in horror games, too. After a certain point, the monster loses its scare potency, and it runs the risk of outstaying its welcome. In the post-Amnesia wave of mechanically-minimalistic haunted houses, where you can only run and hide from the monster (if even that), the monster usually burns out its welcome pretty quickly, and instead becomes an annoying pest since you can't even awkwardly attempt to bash its brains in with a length of old pipe.

With that said, in more traditional horror games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil, monsters can retain a more existential fear factor beyond the immediate threat of violence and terror. After all, in those kinds of games you're usually relying on manual saves, so a monster killing you can potentially mean losing more progress than you would if you had an automatic checkpoint shortly before an encounter, thus setting up a sense of existential dread at the prospect of losing progress.

What's more, on top of that, you also tend to have limited ammo that allows you to dispatch monsters, and health items that let you make more mistakes. If you make them especially limited, it sets up a survivor's economy where you dread running out of the things that make life easier, so you have to decide if it's worth risking a hit by trying to slip past the monster, or if it's more worthwhile to expend precious ammo to remove the problem permanently.

You didn't really get that with a lot of Amnesia-imitators, where you could only run and hide from the monster, and your progress was saved frequently and automatically. The right kind of mechanical depth can add enough tension and dread to offset the monster losing its personal scare factor, since if they embody the existential threats of lost progress and resource scarcity on top of mere violence, they're still kinda scary because such threats are universal and intrinsic to the human condition.

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june_is_cold4 t1_itm85an wrote

Actually the Spanish Civil War is one of the most written-about wars (I don’t know how to express that in English, sorry) of all times! Spanish people won’t shut up about it.

Paul Preston has a pretty decent book about it called “The Spanish Civil War” and you can find it in English if you want to learn more about it :)

But for the lost phrase… no idea, sorry

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Zealousideal-Slide98 t1_itm9vje wrote

This makes me think of a story from my childhood. We went to visit the Soo Locks which are in the UP of Michigan/Canada at Sault Ste. Marie. A ship from Greece got stuck in the lock. As they were waiting for the waters to rise so the ship could be freed the sailors were hanging out on the deck with nothing to do. So they kept repeatedly shouting “hello baby” which sounded like “hello bebe” and waving to all of the women walking by. For some reason my family found this hilarious. We still will jokingly say “hello Bebe!” When we see each other.

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Four_beastlings t1_itmajn0 wrote

Replying to stygyan (#205,197)

Nena for your girlfriend is sort of old fashioned, honestly I've only ever been called that by older relatives and female friends. Bebé for a lover, I've only ever heard it from Latin Americans.

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Harsimaja t1_itmch03 wrote

Replying to cavalier24601 (#198,062)

Pet peeve of mine that keeps happening: I make a jokey ‘meta-innuendo’ in a similar way when someone says something that has an obvious double meaning, alluding to something I could say, and get “Ah but say it! Haha” when it should be obvious I don’t have a specific wording in mind but the general idea is clear.

> “There are a few positions on the table”

> “Haha well you know which ones I’d suggest ;)”/“You know what I’d say to that ;)”

> “Haha ;) Suggest them!/Say it!”

> “Um. Isn’t it a little less lame if left unsaid…?”

I obviously don’t have more specific direct wording in mind - the allusion to it was the specific wording.

Viciously murders the mildly amusing moment, even if they got it and found it funny.

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ZereneTrulee t1_itmllkw wrote

You guys are messing me up laughing 😂🤣😅!

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FlaccidRazor t1_itmlwk3 wrote

An expression could be a word or phrase, my guess would be that it's a word that begins with F.

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R0l0d3x-Pr0paganda t1_itmqbsx wrote

Replying to R0l0d3x-Pr0paganda (#201,037)

Really?!?! Most of our Spanish comes from the Canary Islands.

But the slangs I mentioned, it's used in reggaeton, and the C one is used with prostitutes. Although I heard it is used in a dirty fashion when you are having sex with someone.

Both are used both ways interchangeably in a dirty fashion. If you say it outloud either you are using it as part of a dirty joke or dirty talk.

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Four_beastlings t1_itmrcsh wrote

Replying to monkeyhind (#207,061)

Papi and Mami are 100% Latin American. It's more normal today because of the high immigration, but anyone would have been grossed out by it 20 years ago (execpt people with a mommy/daddy kink).

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lodelljax t1_itmuxc1 wrote

I have read it twice. Once when I was in my early twenties, and yes very entertaining. Second a few years after being in Iraq where the book was now sad. Much the same for “For whom the bell toll’s”. I recommend that as a companion book.

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chortlingabacus t1_itn6tf1 wrote

Replying to LordsMail (#203,544)

Obscure but not used only in a small region, and replying to it with 'Ah, but if it were submitted to the compositers in a different typeface?' is the streetwise way of saying, depending on region, 'How much for full intercourse?' (Catalonia) or 'By the gushing blood of martyrs tortured with excruciating pain, you look like an undercover cop to me.' (Andalucia)

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mynyddwr t1_itnawuk wrote

When I was a sailor in the sixties the magic and almost universal phrase was "jig-jig"

I'm not sure how reliable a guide Orwell is to the Spanish Civil War. He joined the P.O.U.M. which was an anarchist organization and which got into a fight with the communists in Barcelona. Anthony Beevor has written a useful history of the Spanish Civil War, although Beevor in turn is a Marxian. It is called the "Battle for Spain".

One of the most impressive novels about the war I have read is the Spanish trilogy that starts with "Los Cipreses creen en Dios" and ends with "Un millón de muertos".

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chii_hudson t1_itnqgin wrote

Replying to Flairiart (#201,229)

“OK, baby” is the reply to whatever the whores said, that is the wit of this passage. The Spaniards knew two expressions, the prompt from the whores and their own reply in English

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StewitusPrime t1_itnsra1 wrote

Replying to Harsimaja (#205,491)

That’s when you gotta double down and name off a few in an equally vague way. Stuff like “you know the classics. Give ‘em the ol’ Alabama Fruit Basket, or Italian Chandelier. If you know, you know, amirite!?” If they press further, hit ‘em with the old “If you have to ask, you’ll never know. Now who’s in?”

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llentiesambpernil t1_ito47wm wrote

Probably “fuck” or “fuck me.” As a Spaniard, I can assure you everyone knows that word, even those who have no clue about anything else in English.

Also I’m from Barcelona and love that book!

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MasterOfNap t1_ito4c6k wrote

Replying to mynyddwr (#209,205)

I’ve read Beevor’s book but I don’t recall anything suggesting he’s a Marxist, do you have any source for that?

Orwell is a first-person witness in the war, which means there’s no way he can be perfectly neutral. That doesn’t mean he’s lying in the book though, unless you have some other evidence to support otherwise.

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SlitchBap OP t1_ito76v4 wrote

Replying to mynyddwr (#209,205)

Above all Orwell was an idealist turned realist. That's what I love about this narrative, too many other works are saturated with idealism and partisanship.

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DEvil2791 t1_itodz3p wrote

I would say it, but reddit’s mods would ban me for sure if I do.

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Tundra-Dweller t1_itofyzl wrote

There’s a film directed by Ken Loach called “Land And Freedom” (1995) which I think is based on this book. It’s well worth a watch (but anyone who hasn’t read the book, please do first)

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Lanky_Fella t1_itogxsj wrote

Replying to Potential_Energy_353 (#200,883)

Eh not really. People fighting in Ukraine are fighting in the name of sovereignty.

People fighting in Spain were specifically anti-fascists, often socialists. They were seeking either a revolution or changed politico-economic system, where Ukraine is fighting to maintain the same system

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A_Powerful_Moss t1_itol5bw wrote

You should check out Road to Wigan Pier as well. His non-fiction stuff is great

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Potential_Energy_353 t1_itord56 wrote

Replying to Lanky_Fella (#213,255)

And their system is democratic, while the invaders are sent by an actual fascist state

The volunteers I’ve talked to didn’t think beyond “a people have been invaded and asked for help”.

So that’s two levels of similarity

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mynyddwr t1_its6omg wrote

Replying to MasterOfNap (#212,201)

I certainly didn't say Orwell was lying, I merely pointed out that Orwell had a particular experience of the war, which was perhaps not consistent with the experience of many others.

Beevor, certainly had a reputation for taking the Soviet line in his earlier work, on Stalingrad and others. Don't forget that British historiography was deeply influenced by Marxism. I said Beevor was a Marxian not a Marxist.

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Harsimaja t1_itvj3xw wrote

Replying to GrudaAplam (#238,546)

Aw gee thanks, because you were there and know what was said and how! Even in the cases where the context is flirting and they want me to say something more explicit? Fascinating.

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