One of my most worthwhile resources for studying Spanish over the years has been the podcast site SpanishPod.com. Today, I’ll begin dissecting a recent SpanishPod lesson called Noche Buena (Christmas Eve). The lesson begins:
Ya son las 11 de la mañana, ¡ya nos cogió tarde!
It's already 11am, we're running late.
The first clause: Ya son las 11 de la mañana, is straightforward enough. Ya refers to the recent indefinite past, which in this case, translates to already. And son las 11 (they are 11) is the standard way of saying that it’s 11 o’clock.
The interesting portion of the sentence comes next: ¡ya nos cogió tarde! Coger is most commonly defined as to take, or to catch. (In Latin America, coger is also a vulgarity, so you have to know exactly how to use it in order to avoid misunderstandings!) In this case cogerse is a colloquial idiom of Cuba which means something similar to the reflexive verb ponerse to put oneself, along the lines of se cogió una borrachera he got drunk. Hence the translation: We're running late. Other Latin American countries would say something like "nos hizo tarde."
James
James
Tengan cuidado con el verbo "coger". En algunos países, como Argentina, es una mala palabra. Utilicen "agarrar" u otros verbos en vez.
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