An English speaker's Univision World Cup Primer?
July 1, 2014 10:12 AM   Subscribe

I am watching the World Cup on Univision, and am excited to understand as much of the commentary as I do, but would love to understand more. Where can I find common words/phrases?

In case it matters: I speak Spanish well enough to chat with a two year old whose first language is Spanish. I'm learning, but not far along yet.

Does anyone know of a good place online for me to learn the phrases or words I'm specifically likely to hear during a Univision broadcast of a World Cup game? I'm perfectly happy if it's the soccer section of a larger "Spanish for dummies" site, or if it's just some soccer enthusiast with a blog post about listening to the game in another language.

Bonus points if it's specifically related popular Univision announcers who have their own favorite sayings (like Tommy Smyth and the ol' onion bag)

Thanks!
posted by jermsplan to Education (8 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Univision has english captions now for some of their programming, you can check if the football is included in that group. Otherwise I find that foreign language programming is a lot easier to absorb with the native caps turned on as sometimes I don't connect the spoken word with the word I am familiar with reading.
posted by elizardbits at 10:23 AM on July 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


Best answer: LingoLex has futbol terms in English, Spanish, and French
posted by blob at 10:49 AM on July 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


Also see castellanoactual.com, telecable.es and so forth. The search term I used was "palabras españolas fútbol"
posted by blob at 10:51 AM on July 1, 2014


Best answer: Some of the terms you hear on Univision are primarily Mexican Spanish, so you might not find them on sites that focus on Spanish as spoken in Spain. Here's a list that has some Mexican and Latin American terms: 45 Spanish Football Terms and Phrases

Some more terms that are not on those lists:

la mitad: half (as in, half of the field, not halftime)
la cancha: field, pitch
adelantado: adj. offside
el disparo: shot
-azo as a suffix (pelotazo, golazo): an intensifier

There's one Univision announcer who often refers to the ball as "el globo." And someone else who is in the habit of calling plays "flojo" (weak).
posted by expialidocious at 1:06 PM on July 1, 2014


And another: "larga" meaning "too long" - the ball overshot its target.
posted by expialidocious at 1:11 PM on July 1, 2014


Also, if it throws you off, when they're referring to players they very frequently use full (including middle) names.

I especially love that they've taken to calling Jermaine Jones "Jay Jay Jay" with a semi-English accent... turns out his middle name? Junior.
posted by psoas at 2:00 PM on July 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


A few more (keeping in mind I learned most of my Spanish watching soccer on Univision):
servicio (sp?)- service (er... a cross)
centro - also a cross
director técnico - trainer/manager/head coach

It's not relevant that much longer but "round of 16" is "octavos de final" (1/8th final--lots of languages that aren't English have this sort of construction).
posted by hoyland at 3:11 PM on July 1, 2014


Response by poster: Thanks to everyone who gave some examples. I marked the sites I got the most out of, ymmv. Elizardbits, your suggestion is good and I will do that when watching other shows, but when watching the game I couldn't tear my eyes away from the action to read the captions.
posted by jermsplan at 10:24 AM on July 14, 2014


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