Ruca

[Gala]

I just started using the Streetwise Spanish book/CD set, and in the very 1st dialog the word "ruca" is used in what to me seems to be a completely erroneous manner: 2 guys are discussing a big blowout of a party, and one asks if there were a lot of chicks there, using the word "rucas." The book explains that this term means a girl or woman, "often a pretty" one.

Now, I already had learned the word ruca in context from authentic Spanish sources, and am almost entirely certain that it actually means "old lady," and I've always heard it used in a derogatory fashion, equivalent to "old hag."

Now, "vieja" I know is used in this contradictory way in slang, to mean "chick." Could it really be that ruca is also? I've certainly never heard it, which makes me wonder if this book is totally unreliable.

BTW, this dialog is set in Los Angeles and is supposed to feature typically Mexican colloquial Spanish, which is the spoken variety that I've had the most exposure to.

[poli]

My guess is that, seeing that it's LA, the use is ironic. That part of the world has an ironic tinge, at least the anglo part does, and I imagine the latino side does too. Day is night, good is bad, and old and cold is young and hot.

[Gala]

That seems a likely explanation (especially given the precedent set by "vieja,") but it still makes me doubt the general utility of this book. Although the focus is supposed to be on slang and colloquialisms, when it features a dialog that uses a minority slang-meaning for a word that has a very different and much more common meaning that is also slang, it should at least clarify that in the explanatory notes.

It makes me suspect that the authors (both Anglos) actually have very little familiarity with the vocabulary they purport to teach, and that they just paid native speakers in various countries and cities to come up with regionally representative dialogs based around certain topics, and accepted their definitions without any further research.

EDIT: I just saw this in the vocab list at the end of the chapter: "la ruca- girl, woman (most of Latin America except the Southern Cone)" I also just checked my unabridged bilingual dictionary, which includes a fair amount of colloquialisms. It has no definition for ruca (or ruco, confirming my belief that any use of this as a noun probably goes beyond colloquial usage and into slang,) but does have an adjective: "ruco, -ca adj. (L. Amer) worn-out, useless."

[JPablo]

Mmm... interesting.
DRAE only gives,
ruco, ca.
1. adj. Am. Cen. Viejo, inútil. as you mention.



The word "ruca" and "rucas" appear in CREA (Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual), but sincerely I had never used the word and it is a bit hard for me to get the meaning in the different examples given there...

It seems like the book you are using is a bit "above our heads"... (I'd not think that it is necessarily incorrect or unreliable... but...)

[Gala]

Or as Beavis once told Butthead when the latter said a video was "over his head:" "Well, it's under my butt!"

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

I think you know this, but I have to state it anyway: this is a very pejorative and disrespectful way of talking about a woman. For many people it's rather uncomfortable to hear someone speaking like that.

In Mexican slang, "ruca/ruco" had always been used to talk about someone who is old. It was often used by young people to talk about their parents or teachers, or in general, anyone who would be older than them.

· El viejo/ruco me dijo que ya no me va a dar dinero.
The old man told me he won't be giving me money anymore.

· La vieja/ruca de matemáticas me sacó del salón.
The math old hag sent me out of her classroom.


"Vieja" is a pejorative way to refer to any woman the speaker despises, despite her age:

· Esa vieja le coquetea a mi novio.
That witch is flirting with my boyfriend.


In old slang, "vieja/viejo" was an affectionate way to talk about one's wife/husband,

· Vine con mi vieja a la fiesta.
I came with my sweetheart to the party.

· Viejo, ¿qué quieres cenar?
What do you want for dinner, darling?


Lately, some young men have started to use "vieja" as a synonym of "girlfriend", but with a rather pejorative meaning, as if girlfriends were their property.

· Deja de estar viendo a mi vieja.
Stop watching my woman.

· Si mi vieja se pone una minifalda, la corto.
If my woman wears a miniskirt, I break up with her.


Finally, in some regions, all these meanings are starting to get mixed and "ruca" has become any kind of woman (as it used to be one synonym of "vieja"), and they sometimes don't even notice that this is a really derogatory way of speaking.

[Elaina]

Speaking to my friend from Texas, she is telling me that the word "Ruca" is just another word for woman....

Mi ruca - "my wife" or "my girlfriend"
La ruca - the woman ....
Mis rucos - my parents
El ruco - the man
mi ruco - my father (for mother: mi vieja)

For some reason, she says that a woman hardly ever refers to her husband/boyfriend as ruco...

I guess if you are speaking about an area in LA, it would be basically the same in TX.

[poli]

A Caribbean friend of mine confirmed that in that region, ruca translates to old bag, and ruco old geezer.

[Gala]

Thanks for the informative responses! Elaina: I did some digging and found evidence confirming that the meaning your friend and the book give is used in the US, at least in the SW (although of course the book misrepresents it as being "the" meaning in all of Latin America, except the Southern Cone.) It seems to have come from the Mexican-American "cholo" subculture, in which "ruca" is used to refer to women in general, and also more specifically to girlfriends/wives, in the same way that men in US biker gangs refer to their wives/girlfriends as "my old lady." This usage has even spread to some gringos, due to a love-song by Sublime entitled "My Ruca."

I am, however, now going to take anything from this book with a large grain of salt, and I might just get rid of it. I really don't want to go out of my way to learn slang that is that regionally specific; I was hoping that the book would emphasize the most common slang and colloquialisms that are used or at least understood in most regions. But what really annoys me is that, judging from how they present "ruca," this book can't even be trusted to give you accurate info on important regional differences. For example, if "ruca" had been presented exactly as it was in the LA dialog, and explained in that context, it wouldn't have bothered me........IF they had also explained the other (and more common) usage in Mexico, the Caribbean and (I imagine) other places. But they apparently didn't know, and even worse, they pretended that they did. This is especially troubling as the word in question can be very offensive.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

By definition, slang is by definition group-specific, so it's usually not shared in bigger regions. Communication technologies can make the use of a word or expression more general, but one cannot bet on that for every case.

Anyway, for what I see, your book might be presenting mostly chicano slang, from which one can also learn how language is evolving in those communities.