Tea versus Infusion

It’s funny, but when you start learning Spanish, one of the things you’ll notice is how many similarities there are to English. Many words are easy to figure out because they are so much like their English counterpart; words like educación and education, for example, mean the same thing and are pronounced quite similarly. There are phrases in Spanish that mean the same as they do in English. For example “No me digas” is the same as “You don’t say!”

But other times, words can fool us. A well known false friend is “embarazado”, which looks like it would mean “embarrassed” but actually means “pregnant”! The same is true for phrases.  There are phrases we use in English – especially idioms like “a piece of cake” that aren’t used the same way in Spanish.  Of course, generally, there will be a Spanish phrase that conveys the same general idea.  For example, when I say something is a “piece of cake”, my Spanish-speaking friends in Peru say “que papa!” or “what a potato”, signifying that it was as easy as eating potatoes.

I found a video that shows well how another phrase we say normally in English doesn’t translate exactly into Spanish. It’s normal for us to ask for a cup of chamomile tea – we typically call any drink that is steeped in hot water a “tea”. But in Spanish, chamomile is considered an infusion because it doesn´t contain actual tea. You wouldn’t ask for a té de manzanilla, but rather for an infusión de manzanilla. Just watch the video – it will all make perfect sense!