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Spanish Adds to Traffic's Realism
Part 2: Brief Notes for Spanish Students
 More of This Feature
• Part 1: The Review
 
  Related Resources
• Spanish at the Movies
 
 From Other Guides
• Traffic (Hollywood Movies)
• Traffic Flows (Civil Liberties)
• Traffic Review (Dramatic Movies)
 
 Elsewhere on the Web
• Traffic (official site)
• Benicio Del Toro Zone (official site)
• Internet Movie Database
 
 

If you're looking for a chance to see a Spanish-language movie in a theater but don't have easy access to a theater that screens foreign films, the next best thing might be Steven Soderbergh's Traffic. Although it's primarily an English-language film about the drug trade and its effects on people, one of the main story lines takes place in Mexico and was filmed almost entirely in Spanish.

As Spanish-language movies go, the Spanish of Traffic is easier than most to understand. Most of the speaking is fairly slow, and there isn't a lot of use of slang other than the ch word, the most common Spanish equivalent of an English obscenity. And, of course, there are the subtitles to more than help you along.

The vocabulary used, while not basic Spanish, generally follows the English subtitles fairly closely. The dialog seems to have been translated into Spanish from an English script, so quite a few cognates are used.

There are at least two subtleties that don't come across in the subtitles. One is the use of diminutives as a nickname, such as calling Manolo Manolito. And there appear to be a couple instances where the familiar form of "you," , is used when the more formal form, usted, normally would be called for. In these cases, the use of could be seen as a putdown.

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