Baby formula and bottles

[alliecat]

Hello, all!

I'm from a Puerto Rican family who lived in the States and rarely spoke Spanish at home. My grandparents, however, usually spoke to us in Spanish when we were visiting. As a result, I have vocabulary with many gaps and my grammar is atrocious but then I know phrases but don't quite know the meaning :(

I'm trying to speak to my 6 month old in Spanish as often as possible in hopes that she can develop an ear for the language and in a vain attempt to get my 8 year old interested in Spanish. I never spoke to her in Spanish because I was embarassed by my poor grammar and for some strange reason she's a Francophile. Go figure. I've gotten over my issues and have decided to make the best of it. I explain all this because my questions may sometimes seem very basic and other times quite complicated, so thanks in advance for bearing with me.

So my questions are:

1 - Would you still refer to a bottle (like a baby bottle) as a botella or there some other common term?

2 - What do you call formula (as in baby formula)?

3 - Is "mi cielo" really just a term of endearment that literally means "my heaven" ?

4 - My grandmother called me "linda preciosa". Would that literally be "pretty, beautiful" or "pretty, precious"? And which would be the sentiment?

Thanks for your patience and help,

Alexandra

[Tomisimo]

Hi and welcome to the forums. Hopefully I can help you with your questions

1 - Would you still refer to a bottle (like a baby bottle) as a botella or there some other common term?
My wife is Mexican, and she calls it a mamila. I think biberón is right as well.

2 - What do you call formula (as in baby formula)?
I'd just say leche, unless you're giving a technical explanation, in which case I'd use fórmula láctea.

3 - Is "mi cielo" really just a term of endearment that literally means "my heaven" ?
Yep.

4 - My grandmother called me "linda preciosa". Would that literally be "pretty, beautiful" or "pretty, precious"? And which would be the sentiment?
For this, I'd say a good translation might be "cute little precious one".


Hope that helps you. Feel free to keep asking if you think I should clarify anything. :) There are some other good people here that will probably give you better answers yet.

[sosia]

Tomisimo's right
1.- here it's biberón (babys calls them "bibe" :D)
2.- "leche" ("leche materna" if it's mom's or "leche infantil" if it's a formula)
3.- Yes. "mi cielo", "mi sol", "mi tesoro", and so on... :D
4.- "cute little precious one" is better than my original option

Muchas felicidades por tu precioso bebé.

[alliecat]

Mil gracias!

Creo que biberon suena familiar. (Apologies, the accented o kept appearing in front of mil, so I couldn't add it.) Y tenia los otros correcto - que bueno!

Y para las pacificadora, lo puedo referer a "paci", o hay otro palabra mas comun? (And please correct this sentence if needed. It's supposed to say "And for the pacifier, can I refer to it as a "paci", or is there another word more common?" Again, there was a problem adding the accented u.)

Gracias por los felicidades :)

Alexandra

[sosia]

¿pacificadora? ¿Qué es eso? ¿Cuna? ¿Chupete? ¿¿Tomisimo?? :D

"y a la XXXX, ¿me puedo referir a ella como XX, o hay alguna otra palabra más común?"

[celador]

chupete se escribe en el paquete de la tienda aquí

[alliecat]

It's been a long day, so I won't even try to do this in Spanish, lol!

I like chupete and it'll be easy for me to remember, so we'll use that.

Thank you for the sentence correction. I'll have to keep referring back to it to study it until the structure becomes more familiar.

I'm poring over dual language labels and listening to the local Latin station, so I'm starting to think in Spanish a little already. My brain aches!

Again, thank you so very much for this and all future help!

[sosia]

I've never heard Pacificador, now I learn it's a chupete (or "chupe" as babys call it) :D
saludos

[alliecat]

Pacificador was what came up shen I searched the dictionary here...

[Tomisimo]

Pacificador is used in Columbia if I'm not mistaken, and in other areas it means peacemaker. In Mexico a baby's pacifier or soother would not normally be called a chupete, it would be a chupón.