siempre

[poli]

I know it means always, but I have a acquaintance who uses it to mean directly. For example, vamos siempre a la tienda. Has anyone in this forum ever heard this usage?

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

Hmm... I have never heard it as "directly", but to mean that we are doing something that was doubtful or unplanned.

- ¿Entonces, siempre vamos a la tienda o no? -> So, are we finally going to the store or not? There was no previous agreement to go there, but someone finally had to decide.
- Pues vamos siempre a la tienda. -> We didn't know where we were going, but it was decided in the end that we were going to the store.
- Queríamos pedir un aumento de sueldo, pero siempre no lo hicimos. -> There was a previous consensus to ask for a raise, but in the end we were convinced not to do it.
- ¿Siempre vas a cortarte el cabello? -> You seem to have planned to go and get your hair cut, but you didn't look convinced to do it, so I'm asking if you finally decided to go to the hairdresser.
- ¿Siempre sí o siempre no? -> Have you made your mind yet?

[aleCcowaN]

Here, siempre means "without exception", or "on a regular basis", or "univocally".

I always imagine that if I were a native English speaker living in the States and I wanted to learn Spanish, I would somewhat take exception of the Spanish spoken around me, especially by those native Spanish speakers who emigrated being old enough to keep a thick accent. There's no guarantee they just used a couple thousand words before they left their countries of origin, and they had to interact with people in similar circumstances speaking scores of quasi-dialectal equally limited versions of the language. I'm sure most of them spot Spanglish, but they're mostly unaware of the degree of pidginization their native language versions had gone through. Besides, it's the matter of "family idioms" or "family code", that is, a stable use within a family or group that ends up feeling like real language, mainly because some others around can grasp its meaning. I suspect this happens in the States, hundredfolded.

As an example of the latter, I grew up in a time when there was just one TV set in the house and the whole family watch it together. Watching Hollywood films while eating pizza -home made or walk to the pizzería, wait, and walk back balancing the stack of flat boxes as if it is a waiters tray- became a tradition. As the formulaic plots progressed my father would say "éste tiene olor a fiambre", meaning that character most probably would be murdered later. It comes from the local word for cold cuts and its use in slang meaning "stiff" (cadáver). The phrase became a staple and all members of the family would compete to spot the fiambre as formulaic plots came in succession until famous 70s and 80s films led the way out of so much nonsense and the public became more sophisticated (or our brains just gave up). Today, I feel tempted to say "we say tiene olor a fiambre", but I know better. How many times have I offer a similar explanation totally unaware? Only Darwin knows. I hope it's just a few times. But the question is, have they?

[poli]

Thank you Angelica for explaining this usage which siempre confounded me. Now it makes more sense. The word always is not nearly as versatile.

Alec, in these parts. we use he's a cooked goose when someone's future seems dubious. I read a book by author Thomas Berger who used the term stew meat when referring to a character who is doomed, but unfortunately this term has never been incorporated in commonly spoken English.