Help me, Spanish speakers!

Hmm, I don't know but I'm responding in case someone tells you to ask me. Voyager should know if she ever turns up. My hubby is at work so I can tell you later tonight or tomorrow. Sorry.

Good luck!

chava or vata would work in my day--but that was sometime ago. i'll ask my chicanas when they come in after lunch. be warned this will be northen mexico slang. not cuban or puerto rican---s6

They say Chava here but it's usually more like 'kid', a teenager.

when i was in high school--granted it was 40 years ago--chava was pretty strong. i have been teaching a unit on the way things were in the past--to introduce the imperfect tense. one of our words is papel de carbon. cannot tell you how many times i have said 'papel de cabron" today! just trying to avoid it brings it to my lips. kind of like never assigning anything on page 69--s6

chola is a gang thing--the saggy baggy look. at least in northen mexico. mala is a bad girl. puta is really bad--bitch. more of an insult.

I thought puta was slut. Yeah, don't call anyone that.

Usually when I'd act tough as a kid my older brother, who did the lion's share of the parenting, would say something like, "Que brava, hija de tu chingada madre." The word you looking for in that lovely phrase would be brava. You could also use the word dura, but that means hard. Though brava's literal translation is brave, the word for tough, contumaz, is more for a difficult person rather than a person who is physically tough. Hope this helped. .

i'd back off from chingada though. back way off---s6

Voyager said:

"Que brava, hija de tu chingada madre." .

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What does this actually mean?

Kev

WendyNYC said:

I guess I could always say "girl" in Spanish and have "tough" come from context. Is "chula" Spanish slang for "pretty girl?"

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"Chula" is cute ... "chuleta" is a pork chop (or a plump pretty girl)

chingar = to fuck (chinga tu madre is about as insulting as you can get in Mexican spanish) and it's often left out of the phrase. "hijo de la ___" often slurred into something that sounds like ee-whale-ah would be sort of a "son of a ...."

"brava" has a secondary meaning of wild and hard to handle, "una yegua brava" would be a hard to tame mare, for example

Brava or Bravo for a male is an adjective for getting angry- all worked up, ready to fight. Or hot-headed.
"No te pones brava" is don't get worked up or angry.
I heard the term Perdurada (as/os) used for the street kids in Caracas, Venezuela It comes from Perdurar which means to endure. I thought that was creative of them.
Callejeras/os is homeless people.