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Spanish Adds to Traffic's Realism |
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Part 2: Brief Notes for Spanish Students
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," tú, is used when the more formal form, usted, normally would be called
for. In these cases, the use of tú could be seen as a putdown.
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