Noche Buena #2

In the last post, I went over the first sentence in our lesson about a conversation that takes place between a couple on Christmas Eve (la noche buena!)

Ya son las 11 de la mañana, ¡ya nos cogió tarde!
It's already 11am, we're running late.

Today, we'll move on to:

Sí, nos confiamos, suerte que Okeechobee está ahí mismo. Vamos, nos tomamos una colada por el camino. Yes, we got overconfident, we're lucky that Okeechobee is right over there. Let's go - we can drink a colada on the way.

confiarse means to be overconfident. In this example we have the preterit form nos confiamos; hence, we got overconfident.

The suerte que (lucky that) construction is interesting in that suerte is a noun, so this commonly-used idiom is technically not correct grammar. It might just be a shortening of something like hemos tenido suerte que ... (we have been lucky that...)

This dialog takes place between a Cuban-American couple in Miami. OkeeChobee ("big water" in the Seminole Indian language) is the name of the largest lake in Florida but in this case refers to one of Miami's main boulevards.

ahí mismo means right there. WordReference says that In Latin America you might see ahí nomás or in México, ahí mero.

tomarse means to have food or in this case, to drink. colada means the laundry! It can also mean crazy. But it's also the name of a drink, not a crazy pineapple piña colada, but a coffee popular in Cuba.

Well, thanks for stopping by! Please leave a comment if you have any questions, corrections, etc.

James

Thank you, SpanishPod! http://spanishpod.com/

SpanishPod - Advanced - Noche Buena

Read Academia Española - colada
WordReference - ahí mismo
WordReference - colada
WordReference - confiarse
WordReference - suerte
WordReference - suerte que
WordReference - tomarse