These Kids Today!

ANTIGUA, Guatemala--Judging by the little hearts and the smiley faces, the letter was written by a young teenage girl.

It was a slow afternoon in our library at Common Hope, so I was keeping busy by translating a few of the letters that the kids write (in Spanish) to their (generally English-speaking) sponsors. My Spanish is far from fluent, but it's certainly up to the level of translating a letter from a kid, right?

Maybe.


Most of the girl's letter was straightforward--affectionate greetings, grateful thanks and the like. But I was stumbling on a few things, so I asked my colleague, Lynn,  if she could help me a little. She has lived here for nine years, so her Spanish is fluent.


The first mystery was the letter "x," which showed up several times in the middle of sentences. In context, it should have been the word "por," Spanish for "for." But "x?" Lynn puzzled for a few minutes, then pointed out that the "times" sign in Spanish multiplication problems is pronounced as por. That made it easy for me to determine that "xq" meant "porque," or "because."


The next mystery was a scrawl that looked sort of like "100pre." I wondered if it was just some sort of handwriting problem. After a few more minutes, Lynn figured out that one, too. In Spanish, the number 100 is  "cien." Thus "100 (cien) pre" sounds a lot like the word "siempre," or forever. Think about signing your high school yearbook "4ever."


The next one stumped us. "TKM," our young correspondent had written--three times in one letter. We tried different ways of pronouncing it, jumbled the letters, whatever. Nope. Eventually, we turned to Google. (That can be a painfully slow process, so it certainly wasn't our first choice.) That crutch helped us figure it out: "TKM" is teenager-ese for "te quiero mucho." (Quiero is pronounced kee-air-oh.) Again, think of your high school yearbook.


It means "I love you very much."