Sweet and clingy

[muckefuck]

I meant to mention another piece of Crazy Jungle Spanish I picked up from Uncle Betty over the weekend. We explained congee to him and he told us that it sounded like an Ecuadorean dish which is also made of leftover rice and served for breakfast. Like Chinese congee, it often contains savory ingredients, particularly duck, and for that reason is often called meloso de pato. Meloso is a derived adjective from miel "honey" and, thus, means "sticky"--at least in CJS. I would've expected a basic meaning of "sweet" and, indeed, that seems to be the more common definition. (DRAE: "Dulce, apacible. Apl. a personas, palabras, actitudes, etc.")

Betty went on to explain, "A person can also be melosa." Now, since I wasn't sure if he'd said meloso or melosa when he first pronounced the name of the dish, I asked, "Is melosa invariable?" (Cf. rosa, facha, carioca, etc.) Turns out it was a matter of congruence. Whereas from an English point of view, one would expect the (masculine/epicene) citation form, persona is grammatically feminine and, hence, demands a feminine predicate adjective. It was a darling bit of L1 interference.

Comments

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

That's awesome!

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

When I was sick, a local Vietnamese friend would insist that I eat her congee. I forget what was in it -- I remember egg and chicken and garlic and ginger -- but it was pure comfort food.

[gorkabear.livejournal.com]

Meloso also refers to "mild". You can have "jamón meloso", but the origin, as you mention is from miel.

And yes, in order to match grammatical gender (which was taught to us kids of the liberal 80s as something different from sex by feminist teachers), persona is a feminine word

Personas humanas...

It's very normal to hear "Es que, como personas, somos muy malas", even said by a man. This reinforces the theory (which is not politically correct) that "hombres" also means "hombres y mujeres". Now you hear politicians say "Queridos y queridas ciudadanos y ciudadanas". Yuck... Or "vamos todos y todas", or what's worse, written "vamos tod@s".

Then remember that we use more "Gente" as a word. "La gente es mala", "la gente es celosa", "la gente es posesiva".