Slang term
I recently saw the phrase, "Ara Kieres Ser Novia" written on a wall in Seattle. What does this mean? I am thinking Kieres is a slang term, but I can't find a translation.
4 Answers
This can be only a guess because of a missing word and misspelling but not slang:
"¿Ara, quieres ser mi novia?" ..... "Ara, do you want to be my girlfriend?"
Hi Fleisner. Yes, I agree with Julian Chivi’s guess. Maybe a bit more about the reason behind why you weren’t able to understand this writing, though: What you’re seeing here is the same phenomenon that’s occurring in English with text messages. As many people use this new technology, they find that they’re “typing” much more. (Others of us find that they’re getting lazy with refusing to fully and/or correctly spell out words.) So, what ends up happening is that ridiculous and unnecessary shortcuts are made. Like, for instance, in English, the word ANY gets butchered to NE. Come on, people! Is it worth it? Confusing everyone and corrupting the language, all for the sake of saving one lousy character? Really? Languages change; I won’t “fight” that. But these changes are too much, too fast, and they’re messing up the language big time.
Unfortunately, this same trend is happening with the Spanish language—although to a lesser extent. In English, the letter k sounds like kay; in Spanish it sounds like que. This is the substitution that has occurred: k is frequently “typed” in place of que. Once you realize this, you can just see that the K in Kieres “represents” the Qu for the correct Quieres. So, yes, Julian is right. Kieres is a deliberate misspelling of the word Quieres. Slang? Nope. That’s not what’s going on here. Interestingly, the letter k exists in the Spanish alphabet, but it’s rarely used. It is reserved only for foreign words that don’t require orthographic (spelling) changes as they’re imported into Spanish. (For example, whisky.) Obviously, then, Kieres must be a corrupted spelling, because there cannot exist, in legitimate spelling, an occurrence of this letter in any word that is not borrowed from another language.
As a Spanish learner, though, the point is that these shenanigans messed you up, right? I mean, you were prevented from understanding the word, much less let alone the context of the message. Or shall we say, you were prevented from interpreting it? Now think about what English learners have to go through when 80% of native speakers don’t even know the difference between your and you’re. More to the point here, think about an English learner trying to read a series of text messages that are full of NEs and NOs that should be KNOWs; not to mention umpteen acronyms, which, pretty much, aren’t used in Spanish. You get the picture.
Yes, I realize that you saw this message on a wall, not a phone. But once you have people in droves start deforming a language, it shows up everywhere, and this instance is yet another example of the proof of that. Whoever wrote this graffiti has already changed his/her mind about how that particular word is “spelled.” Marshall McLuhan—of the old “the medium is the message” fame—was right: once you bring in a new means of communications technology en masse, you get: a.) a whole new bunch of unnecessary communication; and b.) deleterious effects on the language.
Excellent points, Brian!
Technology is creating idiots.
kieres = quieres
its just a quick way of writing it
