What does "dale ponte a jugar" mean?
In Pitbull's song "Calle Ocho" what does 'dale ponte a jugar' mean? I know that jugar means to play...but I can't figure out what ponte is...and what it translates to as a phrase.
6 Answers
It means, "Join me and play."
Just a little grammar behind the construction:
"Ponte" is is made of of two parts, pon + te. The verb is poner (to put) with pon being the second-person, informal ("tu") imperative (command) form. Te is the pronoun meaning "you" or "yourself." It could be literally translated as "put yourself" but as the others have indicated, "get to" is a better translation. In the reflexive form (ponerse) pon + te could also mean "to become" or "to begin."
"Get to playing."
"Start playing."
As Seth pointed out "dale" literally means "give him" or "give her" or "give it." Again, there are two parts: da + le, da being the second-person, informal ("tu") imperative (command) form of the verb "dar" (to give). Le is the pronoun meaning "him," "her," or "it." However, the expression dalé is also often used as a sort of slang meaning "go ahead," "alright," "OK," or even "see you later," or "goodbye." My friends in Spain almost always end their phone conversations with something like "¡dalé, nos vemos!" or ¡dalé, hasta manaña!"
So...after all that I think Pitbull is saying "Alright, start playing!" And I am sure that Jimboy is right in that there is a, um, less-than-wholesome meaning!
Knowing the rest of the song, "join me and play" may have a racy connotation !!!!
means ''start playing'' ;D
Dale ponte a jugar.
Ponte a jugar can best be translated as "Get to playing." If it sounds informal, that's becuase it is, but it's more or less command to begin playing.
Dale in this context means "give him", "give her", or "give it." This is also an informal command.
Now, how you combine the two is beyond me.
Can you give more context?
